[1] In October of that year, he was the first person to be appointed as a law lord under the provisions of the newly enacted Appellate Jurisdiction Act.

His elder brother, Peter Blackburn, represented Stirlingshire as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1859 to 1865.

[5] Though his repute as a legal author led to his occasional employment in weighty mercantile cases, he was still a stuff gownsman, and better known in the courts as a reporter than as a pleader, when on the transference of Sir William Erle from the Court of Queen's Bench to the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Lord Chancellor Lord Campbell startled the profession by selecting him for the vacant puisne judgeship.

[6] Few controversial issues came before him during his seventeen-year tenure of office as judge of first instance, but the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at the trial of the Manchester Fenians in 28 October 1867 were worthy of a more respected occasion, and his charge to the grand jury of Middlesex on the bill of indictment against the late governor of Jamaica, Edward John Eyre in 2 June 1868.

He was raised to the life peerage on 10 October 1876, by the title of Baron Blackburn, of Killearn in the County of Stirlingshire,[7] and took his seat in the House of Lords and was sworn of the Privy Council in the following month.

He was the author of a masterly Treatise on the Effect of the Contract of Sale on the Legal Rights of Property and Possession in Goods.

Wares, and Merchandise, London, 1845, 8vo, which held its own as the standard textbook on the subject until displaced by the more comprehensive work of Judah P. Benjamin.

[9][5] The following is a list of some of the cases in which Lord Blackburn gave judgment: Other notable cases in which Lord Blackburn delivered judgment: Attribution: This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rigg, James McMullen (1901).