John William Eggleston (June 18, 1886 – May 18, 1976) was a Virginia lawyer, politician and jurist whose tenure by the time of his death was the longest in the century.
Although Eggleston firmly believed in states' rights, he became best known for the opinions he wrote overturning attempts by Virginia legislators to avoid complying with the United States Supreme Court's decisions in Brown v. Board of Education (which had a companion case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County).
The school voucher issue then came before the Court again as Harrison v. Day, a declaratory judgment action brought by the Virginia attorney general against the state's comptroller.
Only the two justices from Richmond refused to make the decision unanimous, Harold Fleming Snead joining in the dissent of Willis D. Miller, although a three-judge federal panel on the same day also overturned the Stanley Plan as unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution in James v.
In one of his last of more than 500 opinions, Eggleston wrote a unanimous decision about a prisoner (Robert Lee Clark) being improperly denied his right to appeal.
[7] His great-grandson is Perry Moore, executive producer of The Chronicles of Narnia film series and New York Times Bestselling Author of the novel, Hero.