Henry Harold Kennedy Jr. (born February 22, 1948) is an inactive

senior Senior (shortened as Sr.) means "the elder" in Latin and is often used as a suffix for the elder of two or more people in the same family with the same given name, usually a parent or grandparent. It may also refer to: * Senior (name), a surname ...

United States district judge The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district. Each district covers one U.S. state or a portion of a state. There is at least one feder ...

of the

United States District Court for the District of Columbia The United States District Court for the District of Columbia (in case citations, D.D.C.) is a United States district court, federal district court in Washington, D.C. Along with the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii and ...

Education and career

Born in

Columbia, South Carolina Columbia is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of South Carolina. With a population of 136,632 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is List of municipalities in South Carolina, the second-mo ...

, Kennedy graduated with a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

from the

Princeton School of Public and International Affairs The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (''abbrev.'' SPIA; formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of co ...

(then the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) in 1970 after completing a senior thesis titled "Black Politics in

Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...

, 1888-1900." He later received a J.D. from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

in 1973. Following graduation, he worked for the

law firm A law firm is a business entity formed by one or more lawyers to engage in the practice of law. The primary service rendered by a law firm is to advise consumer, clients (individuals or corporations) about their legal rights and Obligation, respon ...

of Reavis, Pogue, Neal and Rose in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

Subsequent to this he was an

Assistant United States Attorney An assistant United States attorney (AUSA) is an official career civil service position in the U.S. Department of Justice composed of lawyers working under the U.S. attorney of each U.S. federal judicial district. They represent the federal gov ...

for the District of Columbia between 1973 and 1976. He served as a

United States Magistrate In United States federal courts, magistrate judges are judges appointed to assist U.S. district court judges in the performance of their duties. Magistrate judges generally oversee first appearances of criminal defendants, set bail, and conduct ...

of the

between 1976 and 1979. He was appointed Associate Judge of the

Superior Court of the District of Columbia The Superior Court of the District of Columbia, commonly referred to as DC Superior Court, is the trial court for the District of Columbia, in the United States. It hears cases involving Criminal justice, criminal, Civil law (common law), civi ...

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

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

to a seat on the

vacated by

Joyce Hens Green Ruth Joyce Martha Hens Green (November 13, 1928 – October 10, 2024) was an American lawyer who served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 1979 to 2024. Education and career B ...

. Kennedy was confirmed by the

United States Senate The United States Senate is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and ...

on September 4, 1997, and received his commission on September 18, 1997. He took senior status on November 18, 2011 due to a certified disability and is currently in inactive senior status.

Notable cases

*In November 2007, Kennedy ordered the Bush White House to preserve its emails. *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 The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

in 2005. *On August 16, 2010, Kennedy ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainee

Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif (1981 – September 8, 2012), also known as Allal Ab Aljallil Abd al Rahman, was a Yemeni citizen imprisoned at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from January 2002 until his death in custody there, ruled a ...

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. *On June 24, 2011, Kennedy issued a ruling addressing the role of the U.S. Constitution's

Speech or Debate Clause The Speech or Debate Clause is a clause in the United States Constitution ( Article I, Section 6, Clause 1). The clause states that ''"The Senators and Representatives"'' of Congress ''"shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the ...

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."Protections for Legislative Branch Employees"
Passman & Kaplan.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, Henry Harold Jr. 1948 births Living people African-American judges Assistant United States attorneys Harvard Law School alumni Judges of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Judges presiding over Guantanamo habeas petitions People from Columbia, South Carolina Lawyers from Washington, D.C. Princeton University alumni Judges of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia United States Department of Justice lawyers United States district court judges appointed by Bill Clinton United States magistrate judges 20th-century American judges 20th-century American lawyers 21st-century American judges 20th-century African-American lawyers

Education and career

Federal judicial service

Notable cases

See also

References

External links