Henry H. Kennedy Jr.

Henry Harold Kennedy Jr. (born February 22, 1948) is an inactive Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Henry Harold Kennedy Jr.
Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
(Inactive)
Assumed office
November 18, 2011
Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
In office
September 18, 1997 – November 18, 2011
Appointed byBill Clinton
Preceded byJoyce Hens Green
Succeeded byKetanji Brown Jackson
Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia
In office
1979–1997
Appointed byJimmy Carter
Preceded byJoyce Hens Green
Succeeded byMelvin R. Wright[1]
Magistrate Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
In office
1976–1979
Personal details
Born
Henry Harold Kennedy Jr.

(1948-02-22) February 22, 1948
Columbia, South Carolina
EducationPrinceton University (A.B.)
Harvard Law School (J.D.)

Education and career

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Kennedy received an Artium Baccalaureus degree from Princeton University in 1970 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1973. Following graduation, he worked for the law firm of Reavis, Pogue, Neal and Rose in Washington, D.C. Subsequent to this he was an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia between 1973 and 1976. He served as a United States Magistrate of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia between 1976 and 1979. He was appointed Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in December 1979 where he served until he was appointed as a federal judge in September 1997.

Federal judicial service

On May 15, 1997, Kennedy was nominated by President Clinton to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia vacated by Joyce Hens Green. Kennedy was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 4, 1997, and received his commission on September 18, 1997. He took senior status on November 18, 2011 and is currently in inactive senior status.[2]

Personal life

He is married to Altomease Rucker Kennedy, a lawyer who is a partner with the firm of Sanford Heisler Sharp, where she specializes in False Claims Act litigation. She is the author of a novel, Friends and Lovers in Black and White. They have two daughters, Morgan and Alexandra, both of whom are graduates of Princeton University. Kennedy's brother, Randall Kennedy, is a professor at Harvard Law School. His sister, Angela Kennedy Acree, is a lawyer with the District of Columbia Public Defender Service.

Notable cases
  • In November 2007, Kennedy ordered the Bush White House to preserve its emails.[3]
  • On January 9, 2008, Kennedy rejected a request from terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay seeking a court hearing into the destruction of interrogation tapes by the CIA in 2005.[4]
  • On August 16, 2010, Kennedy ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainee Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif could not be held by the U.S. government. Kennedy found that the government's key piece of evidence, a heavily redacted intelligence report, was not sufficiently reliable to justify Latif's detention. The D.C. Circuit later reversed this ruling, holding that Kennedy should have accorded a presumption of regularity to the report. Commentators have criticized the D.C. Circuit's reversal of Kennedy's reliability holding.[5][6]
  • On June 24, 2011, Kennedy issued a ruling addressing the role of the U.S. Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause in federal legislative branch employment lawsuits. He held that the Speech or Debate Clause barred discrimination and retaliation claims that could not be proven without inquiry into internal legislative branch communications, but held that such claims could go forward if the supposedly protected legislative explanation for the challenged employment action could be shown to be pretextual without inquiry into protected legislative activity.[7]
gollark: I can add your compass result to the styropyro discord political compass online metrics visualization engine™, if you have one from the cool™ test with three axes.
gollark: I know what SCP is, I have no idea what you mean.
gollark: Huh?
gollark: Including stuff like "intergalactic birkeland currents", stars not running on fusion and their precise mechanisms being unknown, the atmosphere being held to Earth by opposing charges or something, that sort of thing.
gollark: It was some weird claim/set of claims that the universe somehow runs on electromagnetism and not gravity, essentially.

References
  1. Report of District of Columbia Judicial Nomination Commission
  2. "Two D.C. Federal Judges to Retire", The BLT, November 10, 2011.
  3. "White House Directed To Preserve E-Mails", CBS News, February 11, 2009.
  4. "Judge nixes hearing on destroyed CIA tapes" Archived 2008-10-15 at the Wayback Machine, January 10, 2008.
  5. Benjamin Wittes, "Thoughts on Latif #4–A Fuller Analysis", Lawfare, November 12, 2011.
  6. http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/vol125_latif_v_obama.pdf%5B%5D
  7. "Protections for Legislative Branch Employees", Passman & Kaplan.
Legal offices
Preceded by
Joyce Hens Green		 Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
1997–2011		 Succeeded by
Ketanji Brown Jackson
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