By Fred Tausend

This year, Judge Coughenour will complete seven years of service as chief judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, a term distinguished by its accomplishments and by Judge Coughenour’s visionary leadership. He will continue to serve as an active federal judge and as one of the nationally recognized leaders of the federal bench.

Before his appointment to the bench by President Reagan in 1981, Jack was a partner and top trial lawyer at Bogle & Gates. Some of the notable cases over which he has presided include the trial of anti-government activists purportedly involved in a pipe-bomb conspiracy; a decision upholding the state’s rules to prevent oil spills; finding that the INS violated immigrants rights to a fair hearing, resulting in new deportation hearings for thousands of immigrants; sentencing in a bogus airplane parts case; and ruling the sexual predator statute unconstitutional.

In 2001, Judge Coughenour presided over the trial of Ahmed Ressam in the terrorist bombing case that followed the arrest of Ressam in Port Angeles, as he attempted to enter the United States with explosives destined for a terrorist plot aimed at the L.A. airport. Coughenour’s handling of the case was widely cited as an example of how our federal justice system can handle the prosecution of an Al Quaeda terrorist with fairness and efficiency, without compromising national security.

Blending reason, passion and eloquence, Coughenour has chaired the Ninth Circuit Gender Bias Task Force, the first such task force in the federal court system. Members who served with him give Coughenour credit for the “incredibly congenial and professional manner” in which the task force accomplished its work. Since the issuance of the task force report in 1992, Coughenour has talked extensively with other federal court task forces, bar associations, judges, lawyers and law firms about the challenge of eliminating gender bias in our courts and in the legal profession.

Earlier in his career, Coughenour spent a year on the faculty of the University of Washington Law School. An enthusiastic and influential mentor of future lawyers, he continues to teach advanced trial advocacy at the U.W.

Judge Coughenour has traveled frequently to the former Soviet Union, where he advises and assists Russian judges and lawyers in their efforts to implement dramatic reforms in their criminal justice system. Drawing on his hands-on experience, Coughenour authored the lead article in the Seattle University Law Review, Winter 2003, entitled “Reflections on Russia’s Revival of Trial by Jury: History Demands that We Ask Difficult Questions Regarding Terror Trials, Procedure to Combat Terrorism and our Federal Sentencing Regime.” Characteristically, the article looks to history for lessons that apply to some of the most pressing challenges facing our nation and its justice system today.

In an Op Ed piece that Judge Coughenour wrote for the Post Intelligencer on the 212th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution, he observed: “The Constitution cannot enforce itself. Like any written law, it is subject to manipulation by those who would undermine its principles while paying tribute to its words. We should be at least as concerned, then, with creating a commitment to the values of the Constitution in today’s society as we are with celebrating the past.”

Bringing reason, passion and eloquence to bear on the subject, Judge Coughenour is today’s most articulate advocate of that bedrock principle of liberty and constitutional government--an independent judiciary. No value was higher in the mind and heart of his colleague and friend, Bill Dwyer. It is, therefore, particularly fitting to recognize Judge Coughenour with the William L. Dwyer Outstanding Jurist Award.