Alexander Elliot Bennett

Alexander Elliot Bennett died in Washington DC on January 5, 2025, at the age of 84. He was a loving and devoted husband, father, grandfather and brother, a persuasive and effective advocate who cared deeply for his clients and colleagues, and an avid sailor, birder and adventure traveler.

Alex was born in Houston, Texas, on August 9, 1940. His father Dr. William Ernest Bennett was a physics professor at Rice Institute, and his mother Verna Evelyn Donelan had been born and raised in Australia. They met in England when Dr. Bennett was getting his Ph. D. in physics under Ernest Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. His sister Katrina Nicolle Bennett was a year older than he.

During World War II his father served in the Manhattan Project, and Alex and the family traveled with him to Berkeley and other cities and then lived for a time at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. After the war, Alex and his mother and sister visited his maternal grandparents’ farm in Victoria, Australia for six months, a memory he always cherished, especially because he had a Shetland pony and found a baby parrot that he taught to speak.

On their return to the United States the family lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, where his father taught physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Alex attended public schools, played baseball with his friends on a University of Chicago field near his home, sang in an Episcopal church’s boys’ choir, and proudly rode his motorcycle. In February 1958 he graduated from Hyde Park High School where he was president of the senior class.

Alex attended the University of Michigan as an undergraduate and received a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1961. He then went to the University of Michigan Law School where he served on the law review and received a J.D. in 1963.

Upon graduation from law school, he moved to Washington DC. In 1966 he joined the law firm of Arnold & Porter where he became a senior partner and practiced for forty years, retiring on January 1, 2007. He loved the practice of law, his close friendships and working relationships with his colleagues in the firm and his mentoring of younger lawyers. Alex specialized in large and complex cases in domestic litigation and administrative proceedings and in international arbitration, representing foreign sovereign states, U.S. state agencies and large domestic, foreign and multinational corporations in a range of cases including antitrust law, financial services law, and sovereign-debt matters. In recognition of Alex’s outstanding legal services to the Federative Republic of Brazil, he received its Order of Rio Branco in 1998.

Alex married Marilyn Ann Barnett in 1960 and had three children. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1982 he married Brooksley Elizabeth Born, who was also a partner at Arnold & Porter. They have had a very close and loving relationship for forty-two years. Alex was devoted to his family and very much loved his three children, Andrew Ernest Bennett (Michelle Heller), Laura Frances Bennett, and Peter Joseph Bennett, his two stepchildren, Nicholas Jacob Landau (Blair Lanier) and Ariel Elizabeth Landau (Phil Salkie, partner), his seven grandchildren, Zachary Heller Bennett, Maxwell Heller Bennett, Emily Heller Bennett, Elliot Robert Bennett Koslow, Hazel Bassing Bennett, Indira Lanier Landau and Wyatt Brooks Landau, and his sister, Katrina Nicolle Ashe.

Alex had a special love for Squirrel Island, Maine, where he and the family spent summer vacations beginning in 1970. After retirement he and Brooksley very much enjoyed spending the summers at their cottage surrounded by a vibrant community of friends and frequent visits by the children and grandchildren. Alex ably served as a member of the Squirrel Island Board of Overseers, the governing body of the Squirrel Island Village Corporation, including serving as Chair of the Board.

Alex was an avid sailor and very much enjoyed sailing and power boating in Maine and the Chesapeake Bay with Brooksley for many years. He also engaged in extensive adventure travel, from trekking in the Himalayas in Nepal to voyaging to Antarctica and going on safari in East Africa. Wherever they travelled, he and Brooksley enjoyed birding and viewing other wildlife. In his younger days Alex loved to play tennis with friends in Washington and at Squirrel Island.

Alex brought joy to his many friends and family and will be sorely missed.

The family is planning to hold a memorial service for Alex later in the year.