Mark Jeremy Bennett (born February 24, 1953) is a

United States circuit judge In the United States, federal judges are judges who serve on courts established under Article Three of the U.S. Constitution. They include the chief justice and the associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, the circuit judges of the U.S. ...

of the

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (in case citations, 9th Cir.) is the U.S. federal court of appeals that has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * District ...

Career

In 1976, Bennett obtained his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

degree in

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

from

Union College Union College is a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, and second in the state of New York, after Columbia Co ...

Schenectady Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...

. He attended Cornell Law School in

Ithaca Ithaca most commonly refers to: *Homer's Ithaca, an island featured in Homer's ''Odyssey'' *Ithaca (island), an island in Greece, possibly Homer's Ithaca *Ithaca, New York, a city, and home of Cornell University and Ithaca College Ithaca, Ithaka ...

where he sat on the Board of Editors of the ''

Cornell Law Review The ''Cornell Law Review'' is the flagship legal journal of Cornell Law School. Originally published in 1915 as the ''Cornell Law Quarterly'', the journal features scholarship in all fields of law. Notably, past issues of the ''Cornell Law Rev ...

''. There, he received his Juris Doctor in 1979. After leaving law school, Bennett became a law clerk to Chief Judge Samuel Pailthorpe King of the

United States District Court for the District of Hawaii The United States District Court for the District of Hawaii (in case citations, D. Haw.) is the principal trial court of the United States Federal Court System in the state of Hawaii. The court's territorial jurisdiction encompasses the sta ...

. Completing his clerkship, Bennett served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the

District of Columbia ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

from 1980 to 1982 and for the District of Hawaii until 1990. In 1991, Bennett went into private legal practice as a partner at the firm of McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP. At the same time, he worked pro-bono for the attorney general's office and taught at the

William S. Richardson School of Law The William S. Richardson School of Law is the professional graduate law school of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Located in Honolulu, Hawaii, the school is named after its patriarch, former Hawaii State Supreme Court Chief Justice William ...

. He served as

Attorney General of Hawaii The Attorney General of Hawaii ( haw, Loio Kuhina) is the chief legal officer and chief law enforcement officer of Hawaii. In present-day statehood within the United States, the Attorney General is appointed by the elected governor with the approv ...

from 2003 to 2010 in the two-term administration of

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

Linda Lingle Linda Lingle (''née'' Cutter; June 4, 1953) is an American politician, who was the sixth governor of Hawaii from 2002 until 2010. She was the first Republican governor of Hawaii since 1962. Lingle was also the state's first female and first J ...

. Bennett served as Acting Governor of Hawaii from August 25 to September 3, 2004, upon the absence of Governor Linda Lingle and lieutenant governor

Duke Aiona James R. "Duke" Aiona Jr. (born June 8, 1955) is an American politician and jurist who served as the tenth lieutenant governor of Hawaii under Linda Lingle from 2002 to 2010. A Republican, he also served both as an attorney and a judge for the sta ...

. The executives left the Hawaiian Islands to attend the

2004 Republican National Convention The 2004 Republican National Convention took place from August 30 to September 2, 2004 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York. The convention is one of a series of historic quadrennial meetings at which the Republican candidates fo ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Federal judicial service

On February 12, 2018, President

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

announced his intent to nominate Bennett to an undetermined seat on the

. On February 15, 2018, his nomination was sent to the Senate. Bennett was nominated for the seat vacated by Judge Richard Clifton, who assumed

senior status Senior status is a form of semi- retirement for United States federal judges. To qualify, a judge in the federal court system must be at least 65 years old, and the sum of the judge's age and years of service as a federal judge must be at leas ...

on December 31, 2016. On April 11, 2018, a hearing on his nomination was held before the

Senate Judiciary Committee The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, informally the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of 22 U.S. senators whose role is to oversee the Department of Justice (DOJ), consider executive and judicial nominations ...

. On May 10, 2018, his nomination was reported out of committee by an 18–2 vote. On July 9, 2018, the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

invoked cloture on his nomination by a 72–25 vote. On July 10, 2018, his nomination was confirmed by a 72–27 vote. All 27 votes against his confirmation came from Republican Senators due to his defense of Hawaii's restrictive firearms laws in court. He received his judicial commission on July 13, 2018. On August 16, 2019, Bennett was in the majority of a split panel for the Ninth Circuit which blocked new asylum restrictions by the Trump administration within its own jurisdiction but declined to block the new asylum rules across the entire nation. In September 2020, Bennett dissented when the panel majority found that a robocall defendant could not use the

Federal Arbitration Act The United States Arbitration Act (, codified at ), more commonly referred to as the Federal Arbitration Act or FAA, is an act of Congress that provides for judicial facilitation of private dispute resolution through arbitration. It applies in ...

to compel enforcement of a customer agreement the plaintiff had signed years earlier with a separate company that had subsequently been acquired by the holding company that now also owned the defendant. On December 4, 2021, Bennett was one of two judges who declined to halt San Diego Unified School District's requirements that students be vaccinated by December 20. On September 6, 2022, Bennett wrote a concurring opinion in the 9th circuit decision upholding Washington's ban on

conversion therapy Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to align with heterosexual and cisgender norms. In contrast to evidence-based medicine and cl ...

for minors. The Supreme Court denied ''certiorari'' on December 11, 2023.

Personal life

Bennett is married to Honolulu attorney Patricia Tomi Ohara. He has been a member of the

Federalist Society The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (abbreviated as FedSoc) is an American conservative and libertarian legal organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Headquarter ...

since 2016.

References

External links

*
Appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court
from the

Oyez Project The Oyez Project at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law is an unofficial online multimedia archive of the Supreme Court of the United States, especially audio of oral arguments. The website "aims to be a complete a ...

* , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Bennett, Mark Jeremy 1953 births Living people 20th-century American lawyers 21st-century American lawyers 21st-century American judges Assistant United States Attorneys Cornell Law School alumni Hawaii Attorneys General Lawyers from Hawaii Hawaii Republicans Judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Lawyers from Brooklyn Union College (New York) alumni United States court of appeals judges appointed by Donald Trump University of Hawaiʻi faculty