Benjamin E. “Ben” Carter (1894–1943)

Ben E. Carter, following in his father’s footsteps, got an Ivy League education and developed a stellar law practice at Texarkana (Miller County) but died in 1943, less than four months after reaching the pinnacle of success for a lawyer: justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He had been a state representative and chairman of the state commission regulating public utilities before running for associate justice. He took office in January 1943 but suffered a fatal heart attack in early April at the age of forty-eight.

Benjamin Estes Carter was born on November 1, 1894, at Texarkana to Jacob Monroe “Jack” Carter and Nellie Haywood Estes Carter. His father was a highly educated lawyer, and the son followed his path. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire, then an exclusive secondary boarding school for boys (which later became coeducational). He graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law School and returned to Texarkana to practice law with his father. He was captain of a field artillery unit in France in World War I. He joined the National Guard after the war and was a battalion executive officer of the 142nd Field Artillery.

Carter married Hilda Arnoldson of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1923. She would become prominent in social and literary circles in Arkansas, getting her name (“Mrs. Ben Carter”) and picture in state newspapers many times more often than did her lawyer husband.

He ventured into politics in 1932, running successfully twice for the Arkansas House of Representatives from Miller County. The legislative sessions of 1933 and 1935 were among the most calamitous of the twentieth century. State taxes were slashed, and the state could not pay teachers, its bills, or its debts. Finally, the Franklin Roosevelt administration threatened to halt all aid to Arkansas, and in 1935, Governor J. Marion Futrell, fearing riots, asked the Arkansas General Assembly to raise taxes, including the first sales tax, to raise money to pay the state’s bills. Representative Carter did not run again in 1936.

As Texarkana’s city attorney, Carter took a lawsuit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and succeeded with one of the first utility rate-reduction cases. He became a critic of federal control of utility regulation, which he said was destructive for the country. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, he argued that the country was too big and its interests too diverse for a single national agency to dictate utility standards. A lengthy editorial in the Arkansas Gazette mildly took issue with him. In 1941, the new governor, Homer M. Adkins, appointed Carter chairman of the state Public Utility Commission.

In 1942, a seat on the state Supreme Court opened up and Carter and an eastern Arkansas lawyer, Arthur Adams, ran for it in the Democratic Party primary; nearly all state and local offices were settled in the Democratic primaries until the 1960s. Carter won narrowly.

He took office in January along with two other new justices. He returned to his home in Texarkana for a few days at the end of March, and as he prepared to return to Little Rock (Pulaski County) he suffered a fatal heart attack, dying on April 11, 1943. Chief Justice Griffin Smith, noted for his flowery opinions on the court, always penned ornate eulogies for his colleagues. Of Carter, he wrote: “But few men have, in the brief period of three months, more profoundly impressed upon their judicial associates a background of character, knowledge of the law, ready grasp of fundamentals, insight into complicated facts, personal poise, and complete fitness for the position to which elected.” Carter is buried in Stateline Cemetery in Texarkana.

For additional information:
“Ben E. Carter, High Court Justice, Dies.” Arkansas Gazette, April 13, 1943, p. 1.

“With Greater Federal Control in the States.” Arkansas Gazette, July 22, 1941, p. 4.

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas