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George Rose Smith was praised as “an example of what a judge ought to be” by one legal scholar. In his 37 years on the Arkansas Supreme Court, he never failed to make an impact or earn the respect of his peers. As a judge, writer, and prankster, Smith certainly had one of the most interesting lives of any state supreme court justice.
Smith was born into a distinguished Arkansas family in Little Rock in 1911. His father was a noted Presbyterian minister. His grandfather, Uriah Rose, was the name behind the prestigious Rose Law Firm and had also served as a judge and a diplomat.
From an early age, Smith demonstrated a remarkable intelligence. He graduated at the top of his class from Little Rock High School in 1928. He later attended Washington and Lee University and the University of Arkansas. In 1933, he was again valedictorian as he graduated from the University of Arkansas Law School.
After his admission to the state bar, he joined the firm his grandfather founded. Smith’s uncle, George B. Rose, himself was a prominent member of the firm and spoke six languages and wrote books about Renaissance-era art.
Smith became an able lawyer and quickly earned respect across Little Rock. When World War II erupted, he enlisted in the US Army and served for three years. Upon his honorable discharge, he returned to Arkansas and began planning the next phase of his career.
In 1948, he was elected to the Arkansas Supreme Court, a position he would serve for the rest of his career. In the process, he became known for the special care he took in writing his legal opinions. During his tenure on the state supreme court, he wrote more than 2,000 decisions. These decisions affected such areas as allowing the public easier access to government records to civil liberties and death penalty cases. As he wrote in a 1980 decision overturning a conviction, “A court proceeding should not merely be fair; it should appear to be fair.”
He once offered a reward of $100 to anyone who could find the smallest error in grammar, punctuation, or spelling in his legal writings. Not even the pickiest English teacher in the state could find an error, and the reward went unclaimed. In his spare time, he not only solved but devised crossword puzzles. These puzzles appeared in newspapers across the United States and sometimes stumped the best crossword solvers.
Smith became a beloved figure in the legal community for his sharp sense of humor. On each April Fool’s Day, he often issued fake rulings as a practical joke. In 1968, he issued a fake opinion declaring that every law in Arkansas had been repealed. In 1985, he issued another fake opinion about the conviction of two twin brothers he had made up, Kilkenny Catt and Gallico Catt, teasing readers throughout the opinion. But one judge in Delaware did not realize it was a joke and cited Smith’s fake Catt v. State opinion in a case.
Smith announced his retirement from the state supreme court in 1986, leaving after the election of his successor the next year. He had served for a record thirty-seven years. He spent his remaining years traveling before his death in 1992. The Arkansas Bar Foundation later established the Judge George Rose Smith Scholarship for law students in memory of a truly unforgettable personality. The Central Arkansas Library in Little Rock also honored him after his passing with a plaque that read, “Wordsmith Extraordinaire, New York Times Crossword Puzzle Author, Arkansas Supreme Court Justice 1949-1987.”
