Attorney General Mark J. Bennett
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BIOGRAPHY OF MARK J. BENNETT
Mark Bennett has been Hawaii's Attorney General since January 2, 2003. He was appointed to a four-year term by Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle, and unanimously confirmed by the Hawaii State Senate. In 2007, Governor Lingle re-appointed Mr. Bennett to a second four-year term, and he was again unanimously confirmed by the Hawaii State Senate.
Mr. Bennett graduated from Union College (summa cum laude) in 1976 with a B.A. in Political Science, and graduated from Cornell Law School (magna cum laude) in 1979, where he was on the Board of Editors of the Law Review.
After law school, Mr. Bennett spent one year as a law clerk to the Hon. Samuel P. King, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. Following his clerkship, Mr. Bennett worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington D.C. from 1980 to 1982. From 1982 to 1990, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Honolulu, Hawaii. Mr. Bennett tried major criminal and civil cases, argued cases on appeal, and supervised Special Assistant United States Attorneys. In 1986, he received a Special Achievement Award from the Attorney General of the United States, and throughout his tenure was a frequent instructor in criminal and civil trial advocacy at the Attorney General's Advocacy Institute in Washington, D.C.
From 1991 through his appointment as Hawaii's Attorney General, Mr. Bennett was a litigation partner in the Honolulu law firm of McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP, where he specialized in complex litigation. While in private practice, Mr. Bennett served, pro bono, as a Special Deputy Attorney General and a Special Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, prosecuting two murder cases in Hawaii state court. Mr. Bennett also taught criminal procedure to second and third year law students at the William S. Richardson (University of Hawaii) School of Law.
In February 2005, Mr. Bennett successfully argued on behalf of Hawaii before the United States Supreme Court in Linda Lingle et al. v. Chevron U.S.A. Inc, 544 U.S. 528 (2005). The Court unanimously reversed a Ninth Circuit decision that had held unconstitutional, under the Takings Clause of the United States Constitution, a Hawaii law limiting the rent large oil companies can charge independent service station owners, and in doing so, repudiated the 25-year old "substantially advance" Takings Clause test. In March 2007, Mr. Bennett was elected as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers; there are a total of 25 Hawaii Fellows.
Mr. Bennett has been married for twenty-two years to attorney Patricia Tomi Ohara.
