Federal Judiciary

Robert W. Pratt, who served more than 26 years on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa after being appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997, died Wednesday at age 78 after suffering cardiac arrest at a gym, his son told The New York Times. Pratt retired in 2023 after presiding over hundreds of cases, including the sentencing decision in Gall v. United States, later upheld by the Supreme Court and widely cited in federal sentencing law. An obituary described him as someone who "championed the underdog," and he helped launch and presided over annual July 4 naturalization ceremonies at Iowa Cubs baseball games, swearing in new U.S. citizens. The article also recalls that Pratt was reprimanded after publicly blasting President Donald Trump’s 2020 pardons of two Ron Paul aides, leading to a judicial misconduct complaint by Eighth Circuit Chief Judge Lavenski Smith and a 2021 letter in which Pratt admitted the comments were inappropriately partisan and reaffirmed his commitment to judicial impartiality. His death removes a prominent voice from the federal trial bench in the Midwest at a time when partisan attacks on judges and debates over judicial ethics are already eroding public trust in the courts.