In 2005 Judge John E. Jones III presided over the landmark case Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, after which he held that it was unconstitutional to teach Intelligent Design within a public school science curriculum. He will address attendees of the 2007 meeting immediately following opening addresses by the presidents of ASPB and the Botanical Society of America.

Judge Jones began his service as a U.S. district judge on August 2, 2002. He is the 21st judge to sit in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. He was appointed to his current position by President George W. Bush in February 2002 and was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 30, 2002.

In November 1994, Pennsylvania Governor-Elect Tom Ridge named Judge Jones as a cochair of his transition team. Subsequently, in May 1995, Governor Ridge nominated Judge Jones to fill a vacancy on the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, which is the largest state liquor monopoly in the United States. After Judge Jones’s unanimous confirmation by the Pennsylvania State Senate, Governor Ridge appointed him chairman of the board. Judge Jones served as chairman of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board for a total of seven years and two months, until he assumed his current duties. During his tenure on the Liquor Control Board, Judge Jones implemented substantial changes in liquor licensing procedures designed to both streamline and shorten the process, including use of the Internet to apply for and renew liquor licenses. He managed a workforce of more than 4,000 people and administered a budget in excess of $1 billion. Judge Jones also gained national attention in the area of alcohol education, with particular emphasis on underage drinking at college campuses and drunk driving. In November 2000, his contributions were recognized when he received the Government Leadership Award from the National Commission Against Drunk Driving in Washington, DC. At the time of his appointment to the bench, he was a board member, and president-elect, of the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association.

Judge Jones has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Dickinson School of Law, as well as an honorary doctorate in law and public policy from Dickinson College. In May 2006 he was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Judge Jones has also received a Rave Award for Policy from Wired. In 2006 he was the recipient of the first John Marshall Judicial Independence Award, which will be presented annually by the Pennsylvania Bar Association.

He has presided over several noteworthy and high-profile cases. In 2003 he struck down portions of Shippensburg University’s speech code on the basis that it violated the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee. In that same year he ruled, in a decision later affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s statute assessing milk producers in order to fund advertising, including the Milk Mustache/got milk® campaign, did not infringe the free speech rights of the producers.

In 2005 Judge Jones presided over the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.

http://www.aspb.org/pb-2007