Judge Jones Speaks

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an interview with Judge Jones, the man who put the smack down on intelligent design in Dover, Pennsylvania.

Jones has been demonized by some supporters of intelligent design. For example, Phyllis Schlafly called him a traitor to the Christian voters that brought him to office (as if a judge’s loyalties should lie with his voters rather than his duty under the law) and the Discovery Institute (the think tank that promotes intelligent design) has repeatedly smeared him.

Anyway, his interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer is the first I’ve seen from him since the trial, and speaks well of his intentions and approach in the case. I’ll quote most of the interview (since it’s brief) and call attention to some especially good parts in bold.

Inquirer: There are a lot of people who are distressed by the ruling, who feel that it seems to be a ruling about the legitimacy of belief.

Jones: A case like this involves an issue that is highly charged and very emotional… . I understand that there is a debate in the United States about where you draw the line, about where the establishment clause comes into play to prohibit certain activities by government, in this case the school board. And there is a subjective element to that line-drawing. All I can say to the critics is that I assiduously tried to find the facts and apply the legal precedents to the facts as I found them… . And indeed, I didn’t know until December 2004 what intelligent design was.

Inquirer: Where did you first learn of it?

Jones: I was driving home from Harrisburg one day in December 2004, and I heard on a radio show that a group of parents had filed suit in this particular case, and that it was in the middle district of Pennsylvania, and of course I wondered, because we have random assignments: Did I get the case? My curiosity thus piqued, I looked at my computer the next morning when I got to my chambers, and I saw the initials “J.E.J.” after Kitzmiller v. Dover, knew that it was assigned to me, read the complaint, and that really - if I’d read about intelligent design before, I don’t recall, and I certainly didn’t understand what the term meant… . People have asked me, “Did you sort of make yourself an expert? Did you read up on things?” and the answer is no, I didn’t… . I tell my jurors, “Don’t read things outside the courtroom. Don’t make yourself an expert. You get everything you need to decide the case inside the courtroom.” We had marvelous presentations in this case, and I got everything I needed during the trial, and before and after the trial, in terms of the submissions, so I certainly have developed a good working knowledge of the issue.

Inquirer: Reading through the opinion, it was hard to evade the impression that you were surprised at the weakness of one side of the case. You used very strong language to characterize the case as a whole and the presentation.

Jones: I’ll answer that question indirectly… . The opinion speaks for itself. There was something I said in the opinion that was grossly misunderstood… . I said that on the issue of whether intelligent design was science, that there wasn’t a judge in the United States in a better position to decide that than I was. [Commentator Phyllis] Schlafly interpreted that as my saying that I am so brilliant and erudite that I could decide that better than anyone else could. What I meant was that no one else had sat through an intensive six weeks of largely scientific testimony, and in addition to the task at hand, which was to decide the case, I wanted the opinion to stand as a primer for people across the country… . I wanted it to stand as a primer so that folks on both sides of the issue could read it, understand the way the debate is framed, see the testimony in support and against the various positions… and what is heartening to me is that it’s now evident that it’s being used in that way… . We did some of the lifting in that trial. To my mind… it would be a dreadful waste of judicial resources, legal resources, taxpayer money… to replicate this trial someplace else. That’s not to say it won’t be, but I suspect it may not be… . And I purposefully allowed the trial to extend and a record to be made… the defendants could never say that they weren’t given the opportunity to present their case. I didn’t cut off anybody’s testimony, I didn’t cut off anybody’s presentation, and I allowed the testimony to be put forth in the ways the parties wanted it to be presented.

Now you have to ask yourself just one simple question. Is this the activist “Darwinist” judge, who entered the case with an axe to grind and a point to prove, as we’ve been told by some? Or was this a man who’d never heard of intelligent design before and who should have been the perfect candidate to convince if there was indeed anything scientific involved with its arguments?

Oh, that wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Discovery Institute and their ilk is music to the ears.