After 34 years, retiring U.S. District Judge John Jarvey still loves helping people solve problems

John Jarvey can't remember when he first decided to pursue a career in law, and for a while, it seemed like it would be a poor fit.

Jarvey struggled in his first year at Drake University School of Law, so much so that he "was very happy to be invited back," he said. But he returned with a renewed enthusiasm the next year for a career in which he could work with and help people, and he caught the eye of one of his professors.

"I got the top A in his evidence class and after that, he said, 'You know what you need to do? You need to do a judicial internship,'" Jarvey said. "I didn't even know what it was! And I said, 'Yeah, why not?'"

Four decades later, it's easy to see that conversation as a turning point for Jarvey, who retired March 18 as The Honorable John A. Jarvey, chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. The professor, Daniel Power, arranged an internship for his student with a federal judge in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the following year a clerkship with another judge in Sioux City, planting the seeds for a 34-year career on the federal bench.

Jarvey says it was exactly where he was meant to be.

"I'm on this Earth to love and to serve other people, and as a judge, you serve people every single day of your life," he said. "It's amazing, it's interesting, it's incredibly challenging, and it's rewarding. To have a career like that, no matter what you do, is so worth it."

Remembering 'evil,' but also fairness, justice

It's likely that not everyone who appeared before Jarvey felt that love. In criminal cases, his demeanor could be stern, even brusque.

Outside of court, he admits that being the arbiter of life and freedom was a heavy burden.

"There's a lot of sadness in this position," he said. "As you look out and pronounce sentence on a 24-year-old young man and see his mom and dad crying, that's very hard to do. And you do it time after time after time, and that's difficult."

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Some of those cases, he said, will stay with him forever. "When you truly see evil in the courtroom, you'll never forget it," he said.

But he also will remember times when he was able to help people quickly attain justice, or to swiftly dispose of meritless legal claims in cases ranging from defamation to patent disputes and employment discrimination.

"The goal is never speed, the goal is fairness," he said. "But still, those events where people walked out with justice efficiently, fairly, quickly, those were those were the kinds of events I remember most."

Over three decades, crime and punishment ebb and flow

A 1981 graduate of the Drake law school, Jarvey worked as a trial prosecutor in the Iowa Department of Justice Criminal Division from 1983 to 1987. He then served as a magistrate judge in northern Iowa until 2007, when he was appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a judge for the U.S. Southern District of Iowa, which includes Des Moines. Since 2015, he has been the district's chief judge.

Jarvey's tenure included the tumultuous 1990s, when spiking violence and ever-more-dangerous narcotics led to new laws imposing heavy penalties. In more recent years, some of those measures have been rolled back. He's also seen Congress impose mandatory sentencing guidelines, and the U.S. Supreme Court reassert the judiciary's independence, declaring those guidelines should be advisory only.

Jarvey said the laws can be uneven — the sentencing guidelines for heroin convictions are "exceedingly lenient," he said, while the guidelines for methamphetamine are "exceedingly harsh" — but he thinks the overall effort to fit the punishment to the crime has made progress.

"Over time, we decide as a country, what's the right amount of time of prison for someone who's going to prison for all these offenses? That's where we're at right now with the First Step Act, with the other retroactive changes to the sentencing guidelines," Jarvey said. "As a society, we're looking back and determining, OK, this was a little too harsh."

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In his own cases, Jarvey said, his philosophy for sentencing was to consider the motivation for the crime.

"If the motivation is greed, prison is probably the right answer," he said. "If the motivation is addiction, treatment might be the right answer. The tougher ones are where the motivation for, like prostitution, is low self-esteem, and those are the harder ones."

'A place of prominence' for the new courthouse

Jarvey's legacy isn't just his court decisions, but something rather more tangible: the new $137 million federal courthouse currently under construction on the Des Moines downtown riverfront. Although he won't have the chance to preside in the finished building, he said he's proud to have "steered the ship" toward completion.

Jarvey advocated for the new building, set to replace the current facility built in 1927, and he and other federal officials tangled with local authorities who hoped to see some other development on the former YMCA property at the corner of Locust Street and Second Avenue. In the end, his view prevailed.

"Those arguments were appropriate, and I don't begrudge people for having different opinions about who should go in that spot," Jarvey said. "But this is a civic corridor, and we help complete the civic corridor. The federal court deserves a place of prominence in the city, and so it is completely appropriate that we're situated there."

The new building will be more secure than the existing courthouse and will have larger courtrooms better equipped for modern technology. It also better serve than the current building to embody the philosophy of the courts, Jarvey said.

"After you see the metal detector (at the main entrance of the current building), you see what? A wall of 20 stairs," Jarvey said. "What does that say to all the people with disabilities in this world? 'Well, this place isn't really for you. You can go around to the side, we built a ramp for you in the basement, and you can come up there.'

"We're the keepers of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and some disabled person shouldn't feel second-class when they come to the courthouse."

'I don't love the law for the law's sake'

Some federal judges take what is known as "senior status" on retirement, continuing to hear cases with a reduced caseload. Jarvey, though, has left the bench entirely. His plan is to open a private practice, split between Iowa and Arizona, which will focus initially on mediation and, eventually, branch into other areas. He said he misses the mediation work he often did as a magistrate judge.

"As a judge, you never want to be thanked. It's not appropriate to thank the judge," he said. "But you watch people walking out of a mediation say things to you like, 'This would never have gotten done but for your participation.' That is rewarding, putting an end to people's problems in a way where they crafted the resolution rather than having the resolution crafted upon them.

"I got so much enjoyment out of that process. I want to get back to that feeling and that way of helping people."

Jarvey said that desire to help people solve their problems has been his driving force throughout his 34 years on the bench. It's all about the people.

"I was meant for the district court, there's no question about it," Jarvey said. "I love people. I don't love the law just for the law's sake. It's only the interaction of the law and the human condition that interests me."

William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Retiring U.S. Judge John Jarvey remembers 34 years on federal bench