Dawson's appointment, along with that of Roger L. Hunt, filled two seats created by 113 Stat.

[3] A famous case heard by Judge Dawson was the criminal prosecution of professional tax protester, Irwin Schiff.

Dawson sentenced Schiff to thirteen years in prison, and Dawson's sentence imposed was unanimously upheld on appeal by the three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with the exception of a contempt conviction, which was remanded for resentencing.

[5] In late 2011, Judge Dawson granted court orders for the seizure and transfer of hundreds of domain names belonging to websites alleged by luxury goods company Chanel to be selling counterfeit merchandise.

He also required that "all social media websites" and "all Internet search engines" (specifically listing Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Yahoo) remove these domain names from any search results.