Robert Clive Jones

Robert Clive Jones
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Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada
In office 2011 – January 1, 2014
Preceded by	Roger L. Hunt
Succeeded by	Gloria Navarro
Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada
Incumbent
Assumed office November 30, 2003
Appointed by	George W. Bush
Preceded by	David W. Hagen
Personal details
Born	1947 (age 76–77) Las Vegas, Nevada, Nevada, U.S.
Alma mater	Brigham Young University (B.S.) UCLA School of Law (J.D.)

Robert Clive Jones (born 1947) is a federal District Court Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. He served as Chief Judge from 2011-2014.

Jones was born in Las Vegas. He graduated from Brigham Young University where he majored in English, accounting and economics in 1971. He then became a CPA. Jones attended UCLA Law School where he was an editor of the UCLA Law Review.

He served in the U.S. Army National Guard from 1971-1972, and then in the U.S. Air National Guard from 1972-1977. In 1975, Jones was a law clerk to Hon. J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. From 1976-1982, he was in private practice. Jones served as a bankruptcy judge from 1983-1999. His wife is Michele Bunker.

Jones is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has served in several positions in the church including bishop. He was a missionary in Japan from 1966 to 1969.

On June 9, 2003, Jones was nominated by President George W. Bush to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Nevada vacated by David W. Hagen. Jones was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on October 2, 2003, and received commission on November 30, 2003.

In August 2012, Jones held that Nevada's election law giving voters the ability to select "None of the above" was unconstitutional. He was overruled by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on September 4, 2012. One member of that panel, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, criticized Jones' handling of the case: "His dilatory tactics appear to serve no purpose other than to seek to prevent the state from taking an appeal of his decision before it prints the ballots.... Such arrogance and assumption of power by one individual is not acceptable in our judicial system."

On November 29, 2012, in the case of Sevcik v. Sandoval, Jones ruled that Nevada's denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Jones stated that,"a meaningful percentage of heterosexual persons would cease to value the civil institution as highly as they previously had and hence enter into it less frequently." He also wrote that adoption is "not an alternative means of creating children, but rather a social backstop for when traditional biological families fail." On October 7, 2014, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed Jones's ruling and directed him to promptly enjoin the state of Nevada from "preventing otherwise qualified same-sex couples from marrying." However, instead of issuing the order, Jones recused himself on October 8, 2014.

In August of 2013, Jones was the only Chief Judge from each of the 50 states that did not sign a letter to the leaders of the United States Congress urging them to avoid further sequestration related budget cuts. The letter explained that further cuts would have a "devastating and long-lasting impact" on federal courts.

In September of 2015, the Ninth Circuit identified Jones as having "well established and inappropriately strong" feelings against out-of-state attorneys.

External links

• Robert Clive Jones at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

Legal offices
Preceded by new seat	Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada 2003–present	Incumbent