Home County: Jackson
Term of Service at the Supreme Court of Missouri: February 1933 – December 1964
Judge Caleb A. (C.A.) Leedy Jr. was born May 20, 1895, in Benton, Missouri. He was educated in Cameron and Plattsburg, Missouri, public schools and Missouri Wesleyan College before studying law at St. Joseph Law School under the direction of Judge Alonzo D. Burnes, a circuit judge in the Fifth Judicial Circuit of Missouri.
Leedy served as the court reporter for the Fifth Judicial circuit from 1912 to 1925 and was admitted to the bar in Plattsburg in January 1922. In 1925, he moved to Kansas City and formed a law partnership with his brother H. G. Leedy.
On February 14, 1933, then- Governor Guy B. Park appointed Leedy to the Supreme Court of Missouri to succeed the late Judge Clarence A. Burney. In the November 1934, voters elected Leedy for a term expiring December 31, 1942. In November 1942, under the state’s new Nonpartisan Court Plan, voters retained Leedy for a 10-year term. In 1952, voters retained him again, this time for a 12-year term.
During Leedy’s service with the Supreme Court of Missouri, he served three terms as chief justice, from 1940 to 1941, 1948 to 1949, and 1955 to 1956. He retired December 31, 1964, with a service spanning more than three decades. In fact, Leedy’s 32 years on the Court is the longest tenure of any Supreme Court of Missouri judge to date. After retirement, he returned to Kansas City.
Leedy was a member of numerous legal associations, including The Missouri Bar, American Bar Association, and American Law Institute. He was an honorary member of the Order of the Coif (University of Missouri-Columbia), an honorary alumnus of the University of Kansas City, School of Law, and was a member of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity (Tiedeman Inn-honorary). His local contributions to law were also significant. In 1957, in an effort to encourage Missourians to practice civic engagement in their everyday lives, Leedy collaborated with then acting Lieutenant Governor Edward V. Long and The Missouri Bar in declaring September “Law of Your Life Month.”
Judge C.A. Leedy Jr. died October 8, 1978. He was 83 years old.
Biographical information by Anna Theroff, 2019, Washington University, St. Louis.
Sources used (please note a copy of each is located on file at the Supreme Court of Missouri Law Library):
Dwight H. Brown, Secretary of State, Dwight H. Brown, publisher, State of Missouri, Official Manual, for Years Nineteen Thirty-Three and Nineteen Thirty-Four, (Jefferson City, MO: Midland Printing Company, 1934), 127.
Dwight H. Brown, Secretary of State, Dwight H. Brown, publisher, State of Missouri, Official Manual, for Years Nineteen Thirty-Five and Nineteen Thirty-Six, (Jefferson City, MO: Midland Printing Company, 1936), 123.
Gerald T. Dunne, The Missouri Supreme Court: from Dred Scott to Nancy Cruzan, (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 209.
“Law in Your Life Month,” The Missouri Bar Journal, vol. 13, no. 9, (September 1957), 157.
Supreme Court of Missouri, “Caleb A. Leedy,” Index to Docket & Roll of Attorneys 1917-1926 Missouri Supreme Court.
The Kansas City Times Staff, Judge C.A. Leedy Jr., The Kansas City Times, (Kansas City, Missouri), October 11, 1978.
The Kansas City Times Staff, Kansas Citian, Ex-Chief Justice, Dies, The Kansas City Times, (Kansas City, Missouri), October 10, 1978.
Warren E. Hearnes, Secretary of State, Thelma P. Goodwin, ed., State of Missouri, Official Manual for the Years 1963-1964, (Jefferson City, MO: Von Hoffman Press, Inc., 1964), 211.
Wilson Bell, Secretary of State, Wilson Bell publisher, State of Missouri, Official Manual, for Years Nineteen Forty-Five and Nineteen Forty-Six, (Jefferson City, MO: Mid-State Printing, Co., 1946), 197.