Warren Leroy Jones

Jones was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on March 4, 1955, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 19, 1955, and received his commission on April 21, 1955.

Although lacking patience for those who sought to avoid the integration of educational facilities,^[4] and almost always voting to desegregate schools,^[9] Jones held a much more "passive" view of the recent Brown v. Board of Education case than John Robert Brown or Elbert Tuttle:^[10] for instance, he would demand evidence segregation caused harm to students before advocating that it be forced.

He also had much less deep interest in segregation cases than his fellow judges on the Court.^[11] Judge Jones would sit in critical Dallas and New Orleans school desegregation cases without writing an opinion,^[12] although here and in Louisiana's St. Helena and Bossier Parish he would support Tuttle, Wisdom and Brown is demanding previously blocked desegregation in the first few years of the 1960s.^[13] The few opinions he did write were simple and direct.^[11]

Jones' somewhat conservative public reputation was primarily due to having voted along with the circuit's conservative judges in favor of a jury trial in the famous contempt case against then-governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett.^[14] Nonetheless, in Meredith v. Fair, Jones had joined with the "Four" enjoining Barnett to admit Meredith.^[15]

He assumed senior status on February 17, 1966. Jones was reassigned by operation of law to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on October 1, 1981, pursuant to 94 Stat. 1994. His service terminated on November 11, 1993, due to his death in Jacksonville.

• Warren Leroy Jones at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.