To learn about what judges think and experience in these situations, The Conversation U.S. spoke with John E. Jones III, the president of Dickinson College, who is a retired federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002.
During his time on the bench, Jones issued landmark decisions in high-profile cases, including a 2005 ruling that teaching intelligent design in science classes is unconstitutional and a 2014 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania, which anticipated by a year the U.S. Supreme Court decision reaching the same conclusion for the nation as a whole.
