Passing of Judge Michael Robert Hogan 1946-2025
By Adair Law
The day after Thanksgiving, we learned that a long-burning light in the District of Oregon has dimmed. Judge Michael Hogan passed away on November 28 after a long illness.
Michael Hogan was born in Oregon City in 1946. In his 2014 oral history, he told of his father, Robert, coming to Oregon in 1937 to work in the Civilian Conservation Corps. “He had grown up orphaned in Georgia and got on the train with four dollars, half a ham, and his first pair of shoes on.” He was posted to a camp on the south fork of the Coquille River. He eventually met and married Maxine Barklow, who came from a pioneer family in Coos County. The Hogan family settled in Myrtle Point, and a brother, Walter joined the family. Robert Hogan worked in insurance and real estate and kept a ranch of about 100 cattle. Mike and Walt had a range of responsibilities on the ranch. In high school Judge Hogan remembered that there were no restrictions on his school activities, as long as the cattle were fed every day. He recalled with amusement, “My father said he would like to have two sons: one a forester, the other a farmer. And instead he got two lawyers.”
Hogan was in the seventh grade when a sidewalk conversation with local (and future federal) Judge Robert Belloni helped him focus on becoming a lawyer. Hogan was accepted into the honors college at University of Oregon, graduating in 1968. He studied law at Georgetown University Law Center while working full-time as a Capitol Hill Police officer. After receiving his JD in 1971, he clerked for Judge Robert Belloni for a year and then was in private practice in Portland for a year. In 1973, he was appointed to serve as Oregon’s second magistrate judge (half-time) and bankruptcy judge (also half-time) in Eugene. He took a full-time magistrate position in 1980. President George H.W. Bush nominated him on June 27, 1991 to a newly created Article III judgeship and he was confirmed by the Senate on September 12, 1991.
Judge Hogan served as chief judge 1995–2002. He was deeply involved in the construction of Portland’s Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse, which opened in 1997, and Eugene’s $70 million Wayne Lyman Morse U.S. Courthouse, which opened in 2006. He took senior status in 2011.
Judge Hogan was known as a no-nonsense trial judge and an energetic settlement judge. “Part of my motivation is to show a sense of gratitude for all the opportunities and freedoms we have in this country,” Hogan said, in an April 1997 Eugene Register Guard article. “I love the United States and sometimes I am a bit overwhelmed…by living in a country in which a person from a small town in Oregon can have the opportunity to serve as a federal judge.” Judge Hogan was proud to help the legal system “see that the woman in Veneta is treated as well as the international corporation. I have a profound respect for being able, in a small way, to help protect everyone’s constitutional values.”
After his retirement from the bench in October 2012, he started Hogan Mediation. At the time he told KEZI in Eugene, “Senior status means I could have cut back on my workload, but frankly that doesn’t suit me and frankly there are too many things I want to do.” Hogan said. “This opens up a whole new group of disputes that I can work on and I love being with people at pioneer points in their life.”
His oral history, housed at the Oregon Historical Society, can be accessed here.
For photos of Judge Hogan that allude to the range of his work and his joie de vivre, look here.
We extend our deep condolences and warm memories to Judge Hogan’s family and friends, including his wife Christine and their three children.