After serving as Monroe County recorder from 1844 to 1845, he began practicing law in 1845.
[2] Buskirk wrote the opinion in the 1874 case Cory v. Carter, which upheld the principle of separate but equal in Indiana schools.
[3] It was one of the precedents cited in the United States Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
He served as a district judge and as a state representative in Indiana, and was also elected Speaker of the House in 1869.
[4] Another younger brother Edward C. Buskirk (1833–1900[5]), was also a lawyer and a Marion County criminal judge.