Steven Colloton

Colloton was born in Iowa City, Iowa. He is the son of John W. Colloton, best known for his service as Director and CEO for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics from 1971 to 1993. Colloton is also the brother of Ann Colloton, an All-American athlete who swam for the University of Michigan swim team (1987–1990). Both Steven and Ann attended public high school in Iowa City at West High School. Steven's other sister, Laura Colloton Geissler, is a reading specialist in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Colloton earned his Artium Baccalaureus degree from Princeton University in 1985 and his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1988. While at Yale, Colloton served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1988 to 1989. He was then a law clerk for Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist from 1989 to 1990.

Colloton served as a special assistant to the attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel within the United States Justice Department from 1990 to 1991. He was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Iowa from 1991 to 1999. From 1995 to 1996 he was an associate independent counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. He was in private practice in Iowa from 1999 to 2001 and served as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Iowa College of Law in 2000. After George W. Bush's election in 2000, Colloton was appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and served until 2003.[1]

Colloton was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit by President George W. Bush on February 12, 2003, to a seat vacated by David R. Hansen.[2] He was confirmed nearly seven months later with a vote of 94–1 by the Senate on September 4, 2003, and received his commission on September 10, 2003.[3] He is on President Donald Trump's list of potential Supreme Court candidates.[4][5]

In February 2017, Colloton vacated the enhanced sentences imposed upon members of the Native Mob, finding that Minnesota's definition of burglary was not a violent felony under the Armed Career Criminal Act.[6][7]

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
• Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

• Steven Colloton at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.