A judge of character.

I FIRST MET JUDGE JOHN E. JONES in 2005 when he was presiding over the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in Pennsylvania, in which a group of eleven parents were suing their local school district to prevent intelligent design being taught in science class. They argued that it was a religious theory, essentially creationism, and therefore contravened the establishment clause of the First Amendment. I was there as a reporter, and it was a very unusual trial, a fantastic intellectual debate involving politics, theology, the philosophy and history of science, and, most centrally, biology. And it was a real lesson for me and I think for Judge Jones as well, for everybody. There was no jury so Judge Jones would be the sole arbiter. And this was the year when President Bush--who had appointed Jones--said the jury was still out on evolution, and members of the press, myself included, wondered how this would affect him. When the trial was over I decided to write a book about it and so went to visit Judge Jones and his family in Pottsville.

Judge Jones was born and raised in Pennsylvania and educated entirely there. He went to Blue Mountain High School, a public school, and then on to Mercersburg Academy, a prep school from which Jimmy Stewart and Benicio del Toro graduated. (Incidentally, all the female reporters in the trial had a huge crush on Jones and they used to say he looked like del Toro but with Stewart's character. He was also compared to Robert Mitchum.)

Jones went to Dickinson College and then on to law school at Dickinson School of Law which is part of Pennsylvania State University. He was admitted to the bar in December of 1980 and went to work for a small law firm in Pottsville while also clerking for a judge. A year after he took his bar exam, he met and married his wife, Beth, a teacher who had also grown up in the area, and they later had two children.

Before long, Jones became an assistant public defender before starting his own law firm in 1986. During these years, he was involved in cases ranging from petty theft to homicide.

In 1992 Jones ran for Congress as a Republican, a race he lost narrowly. In 1995 he was appointed chairman of the Pennsylvania State Liquor Control Board, one of the largest, if not the largest, state monopolies in the United States, which bought, sold, and regulated alcohol in the state. In his day it sold over a billion dollars of alcohol a year. In effect, Jones went from being a small town lawyer to the de facto CEO of the equivalent of a Fortune 500 company with the additional pressure of having to testify in budgetary hearings before the State's House and Senate. During this period, he received several awards and commendations for his work on behalf of alcohol education, particularly in the area of underage drinking on college campuses.

In February 2002, Judge Jones was appointed to his present position and was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in July 2002. Three years later, Kitzmiller v. Dover landed on his desk. Within a year, he had rendered his groundbreaking opinion and in May of 2006, he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the year. (This is what I love about America--one minute you're running a liquor store, next thing you're on the cover of Time. Kind of fantastic, isn't it?)

I came across Jones in this trial, and watching him in court, it soon became apparent that he was a highly civilized and thoughtful man. More than just polite, he was courteous, a gentleman, a man who treated everyone around him with equal respect. I never once saw him leave the courtroom without thanking the bailiff who stood guard at the door. But he was also funny. One day, an objection was raised as to the admissibility of a question. An acrimonious debate followed with lawyers on both sides giving it their all. After at least fifteen minutes of this, Judge Jones ruled that the question was, in fact, admissible and the question was asked again and the witness said, "I got no idea." Judge Jones exclaimed, "After all that?!" and rolled his eyes. On another occasion a witness was asked why he'd never complained about press coverage which he now claimed was completely inaccurate. With a contemptuous curl of his lip, the witness said he had learned not to pay attention to individuals who buy ink by the barrel. I noticed Judge Jones was glancing at me and he raised his eyebrows as if to say, "I think he is talking about you, buddy"

When I complimented him on his humor, he said he hoped it helped reduce tension but was never cruel. He had experienced cruelty from the bench when he was a defense lawyer and was determined never to abuse his power in this way. He never did. Nor would he allow himself to be influenced by power.

His ruling, when it came, was stunning. It was a comprehensive rejection of intelligent design as science and an equally comprehensive condemnation of it and its advocates' dishonesty. It was rational, humane, beautifully argued, and expressed outrage at the amount of pain the whole ID effort had caused the citizens of Dover. "To be sure" he wrote,

   Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the
   fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation
   on every point, should not be used as a pretext
   to thrust an untestable alternate hypothesis, grounded
   in religion, into the classroom or to misrepresent well-established
   scientific propositions. The citizens of the
   Dover area were poorly served by the members of the
   Board who voted for the ID policy. It is ironic that several
   of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly
   touted their religious convictions in public, would time
   and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real
   purpose behind the ID policy.

After the trial was over, I went to dinner at Judge Jones's house in Pottsville. Before dinner I asked him if he had read any of the articles, and there were several of them, suggesting what a good president he would make, and if he ever considered such a thing. He replied, "I sometimes have a romantic Walter Mitty-ish notion of politics but my rational side understands that it's not that way. I think it's debilitating and can destroy good people. And so the tilt is away from that romantic Mr. Smith-Goes-to-Washington scene." I was disappointed. Having watched him in court over a period of six weeks and having read his ruling in detail, I had come to think Jones was a decent man and exactly the kind of person needed in American politics. After dinner I probed a little more deeply and it soon became apparent as he described his political experiences, especially his Congressional campaign, that what he hated most was being forced to clumsily define himself, not as he was, not by what he truly thought and felt but in terms that would get him elected. If he wanted to win, he could no longer see any human issue as having two sides, as being as complex as humanity is, but instead had to transform everything into adversarial slogans.

As I wrote at the end of my book, 40 Days and 40 Nights: "He was a man who wanted to weigh each case, each aspect of life on its merits, on the evidence available and only reach conclusions after compassionate reflection. Politics demanded that he walk around with an axe" I think you'll agree that this describes a man who richly deserves an award for humanism. Personally, I still hope he picks up the axe again, but in any event, Judge Jones certainly deserves the 2008 Humanist Religious Liberty Award presented by the American Humanist Association for his presiding role in the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case, which has done so much to educate the public on First Amendment principles, and for his bravery, his humanity, his intelligence, and his independence.

Matthew Chapman is a screenwriter, director, and a great-great grandson off Charles Dawvin. He is also the author off Trials of-the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir (2002) and 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania (2007).