Patricia Bennett has been selected to receive the prestigious 2026 American Inns of Court James E. Coleman Jr. Award for Professionalism in the Fifth Circuit. Bennett served as dean of the Mississippi College School of Law from 2016 until her retirement in 2022. She will receive the award from Judge Carl E. Stewart and American Inns of Court Executive Director LTG Joseph B. Berger III (Ret.), in May.
“After more than half a decade of her leadership, Dean Bennett turned the deanship over to me with MC Law in an excellent financial and academic position,” writes John P. Anderson, who also serves as the Henry Vaughan Watkins and Selby Watkins McRae Professor of Law and treasurer of the Charles Clark American Inn of Court in Jackson, Mississippi. “Our recent record-setting admissions, bar pass, and employment numbers at MC Law are due in large part to programs and practices first adopted and developed under Dean Bennett.”
Bennett began what Anderson called her “legendary” academic career at Mississippi College School of Law in 1989. She served as a tenured professor and director of the school’s Litigation and Dispute Resolution Center until 2016, when she became dean.
Bennett also has extensive judicial experience. The Mississippi Supreme Court appointed her to oversee Hurricane Katrina litigation from 2008 to 2014, for example. She also oversaw appeals of claims related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2011 and 2012. Earlier, she implemented a drug treatment and rehabilitation pretrial diversion program as a special circuit judge for Hinds County, Mississippi. Bennett served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps while a captain in the Mississippi Army National Guard Reserve and U.S. Army Reserve from 1984 to 1992.
Among other public service positions, Bennett has served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, and assistant district attorney for the Seventh Circuit Court District.
Bennett served as president of The Mississippi Bar Association from 2018 to 2019 and president of the Fifth Circuit Federal Bar Association from 2006 to 2008. She served as president of the Charles Clark American Inn of Court from 2014 to 2016 and the chapter’s secretary/treasurer from 2016 to 2022.
Bennett earned her undergraduate degree from Tougaloo College in 1975 and earned her law degree from the Mississippi College School of Law in 1979.
The American Inns of Court, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, inspires the legal community to advance the rule of law by achieving the highest level of professionalism through example, education, and mentoring. The organization’s membership includes nearly 30,000 federal, state, and local judges; lawyers; law professors; and law students in more than 350 chapters nationwide. More information is available at www.innsofcourt.org.
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