A non-Indian, Judge Eisenberg grew up on a small cattle ranch outside Boulder, Colorado. After earning a journalism degree from the University of Colorado, he worked for seven years as a Los Angeles-based entertainment journalist for magazines in the United States, Japan, France and England. A career change led him to law school, and he earned his Juris Doctor from University of Washington in 1992. Since then, he has served as a criminal prosecutor, a civil trial attorney, a court commissioner, an elected judge, and an adjunct law professor.
While on the Seattle Municipal Court bench, Judge Eisenberg was the judicial sponsor for the Domestic Violence Intervention Project (DVIP), a collaborative, community-based program that serves as an alternative to jail by providing individualized treatment to break the cycles of abuse and trauma. He was also co-director of the Seattle Youth Traffic Court, a restorative justice court in which high school students hand down sentences for teens who have gotten tickets in Seattle.
Outside the courtroom, Judge Eisenberg has been teaching “Museum Law” at the University of Washington since 2011, and each year he introduces students to the many complexities of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. He also practices the martial art of aikido and is the author of the nonfiction book, A Different Shade of Blue: How Women Changed the Face of Police Work.