Photo by: Megan Westervelt

Editor’s note: Judge Robert E. Blackburn has been a U.S. District Judge for Colorado for seven years. Blackburn was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002. After growing up in Las Animas, Colo., he attended Western State College in Gunnison, Colo. and received a law degree from University of Colorado-Boulder in 1974. Blackburn is 59 years old.

Laura Hathaway: What made you decide this path?

Judge Blackburn: From the time I was in junior high school I either knew I wanted to be a lawyer or doctor and the lawyer thing worked out. Even in law school I knew that someday I wanted to be a judge and that worked out.

LH: What has been your most memorable moment as a federal judge?

JB: I don’t know that I can pick just one moment. I have arguably the best job in the world. I really don’t have any bosses, I am appointed for life at a reasonable compensation and the wonderful thing about the retirement for a federal judge is you retire at full salary. So, if you do the time you are rewarded monetarily in terms of your retirement.

LH: What is the hardest part of your job?

JB: The hardest part about my job is, of course, sending someone to prison, especially for a lengthy prison term. And they’re normally men, as opposed to women, so I’m sentencing someone’s son, father, husband, grandfather, cousin to prison without knowing what the privations in prison are and knowing how that is going to strain that relationship personally, politically, socially and economically.

LH: What is the most exciting part?

JB: The most exciting part is presiding in jury trials and in very difficult and complex trials.

LH: You met George W. Bush, what was he like?

JB: Fascinating, very down to earth, very straight-forwards, very honest. There are many things about him to admire. I owe him my professional life, so I’m not entirely neutral or unbiased on that subject.

LH: Do you plan on retiring anytime soon?

JB: Well, the way it works is the “Rule of Eighties”. You take your chronological age and your years of service, at least 15 years on the bench, and that has to total 80. It wouldn’t take you that long because for every year that your working your losing a year off that 80.

So, for me and my circumstances about my mid-sixties I can do one of two things. I can resign and walk away with my full salary or I can transition from active status to what we call senior status, which is semi-retired status. I keep my chambers in the court house, I keep my administrative assistant and I keep my law clerks.

LH: What option would you choose?

JB: I don’t know if I had to decide today, I’ll probably do what most federal judges do and transition to senior status.