Judge Mark Bennett

U.S. District Court, Northern District of Iowa

Mark W. Bennett is a senior district judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. He was nominated to the court in 1994 by President Bill Clinton and assumed senior status in June 2015. Since 2013, he sits biannually on the Ninth Circuit.

A native of Wisconsin, Bennett earned his bachelor’s degree from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1972 and his JD from Drake Law School in 1975. Bennett worked in private practice in Des Moines—primarily as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer—from 1975 until 1991. He has taught at the University of Iowa College of Law, Drake Law School, the University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law, and the University of Nebraska College of Law.

Bennett has sentenced more than 4,000 defendants in four districts. He is a national expert on implicit bias and federal sentencing, and he has helped educate more than 1,800 state and federal trial and appellate judges on implicit bias from Alaska to Florida.