Edith Hollan Jones

American judge (born 1949)

This article is about the American judge. For the advocate for indigenous Australian rights, see Edith Jones (activist) . For the American physician, see Edith Irby Jones .

Edith Hollan Jones (born April 7, 1949) is a United States circuit judge and the former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit .

Jones was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on February 27, 1985, to a new seat created by 98 Stat. 333. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 3, 1985, and received commission on April 4, 1985. Jones served as chief judge of the Fifth Circuit from 2006 to 2012.

Education and career

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Born in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, Jones graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1971. She received her Juris Doctor from University of Texas School of Law in 1974, where she was a member of the _Texas Law Review _. She was in private practice in Houston , Texas , from 1974 until 1985, working for the firm of Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones , where she became the firm's first female partner. She specialized in bankruptcy law . She also served as general counsel for the Republican Party of Texas from 1982 to 1983.

Federal judicial service

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Jones was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on February 27, 1985, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit , to a new seat authorized by 98 Stat. 333.

She was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 3, 1985, and received commission on April 4, 1985, at the age of 35. She served as chief judge from January 16, 2006, to October 1, 2012, succeeding Carolyn Dineen King .

Other service

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She sits on the board of directors of the Boy Scouts of America and the Garland Walker American Inns of Court .

In 2010, Jones visited Iraq as part of the U.S. State Department's Rule of Law program, where she advised and encouraged Iraqi and Kurdish judges.

Supreme Court consideration

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Jones has been mentioned frequently as being on the list of potential nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States . A 1990 report from _The New York Times _ cited her as George H. W. Bush 's second choice for the Supreme Court vacancy filled by Justice David Souter . The _Chicago Sun-Times _ and several other newspapers reported on July 1, 2005, that she had also been considered for nomination to the Supreme Court during the presidency of George W. Bush .

Legal philosophy

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In her opinions, she has questioned the legal reasoning which legalized abortion , advocated streamlining death penalty cases, invalidated a federal ban on possession of machine guns and advocated toughening bankruptcy laws. In 2006, Jones found that a death row inmate who had filed a _pro se _ motion to drop his appeal while his attorney was abroad could not later reinstate his appeal.

In June 2017, Jones dissented when the court found that a university did not violate the Due Process Clause or Title IX when it expelled a student for committing a campus sexual assault and his girlfriend, who had recorded the assault and shared the video on social media.

In May 2018, Jones wrote for the court when it found that Texas Senate Bill 4 , which prohibits local governments or public employees from "endorsing" sanctuary city policies, did not violate the First Amendment .

McCorvey v. Hill

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Jones attracted attention for her opinion in the case of _McCorvey v. Hill _ (2004), which was a request by Norma McCorvey – the 'Jane Roe' of _Roe v. Wade _ – to vacate the finding of that case. Jones joined the Fifth Circuit in rejecting the petition on procedural grounds, but she took the unusual step of handing down a six-page concurrence to the judgment of the court.

The concurrence credited the evidence presented by McCorvey and sharply criticized the Supreme Court's rulings in Roe and in a less famous case that was decided simultaneously, _Doe v. Bolton _. She quoted Justice Byron White 's dissent in the latter that described the Supreme Court's decision as an "exercise of raw judicial power". She concluded: "That the court's constitutional decision making leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer not only about the abortion decisions, but about a number of other areas in which the court unhesitatingly steps into the realm of social policy under the guise of constitutional adjudication."

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Judicial Career

Biography