Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

 

Page 3

 

Ninth Circuit Convenes in Memory of Judge Boochever

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

The judges of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday convened in a special session to celebrate the memory of the late Senior Circuit Judge Robert Boochever.

Boochever died on Oct. 9  at his home in Pasadena, one week after celebrating his 94th birthday.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski presided over the special court session and made the opening remarks. He was followed by Senior Circuit Judge Dorothy W. Nelson; attorney Charles A. Bird, who clerked for Judge Boochever when he served as a justice of the Alaska Supreme Court; attorney Laurie Taylor, another former law clerk now serving the California Court of Appeal; and Boochever’s daughter, Barbara Boochever Lindh.

Boochever received his judicial commission in 1980, as an appointee of then-President Jimmy Carter. He served as an active judge for six years before taking senior status, and continued to sit on appellate panels until he was well into his 80s.

Prior to coming onto the federal bench, Boochever served on the Alaska Supreme Court from 1972 to 1980 and he was the court’s chief justice from 1975 to 1978. He was the first Alaskan to sit on the Ninth Circuit, and flags at state government buildings in Alaska were lowered to half-staff on Friday in his honor, a court spokesperson said.

A native of New York, Boochever completed both his undergraduate and law degrees at Cornell University.

He served in the Army during World War II and after bring honorably discharged in 1945 at the rank of captain, he moved to Juneau to take a job as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Alaskan Territory.

One year later, he went into private practice as a partner in the Juneau law firm of Faulkner, Banfield, Boochever & Doogan, where he remained until his appointment to the state bench.

He moved his family to Pasadena in 1983.

 

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