United States Solicitor General

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The United States Solicitor General is the individual appointed to argue for the Government of the United States in front of the Supreme Court of the United States, when the government is party to a case.

The Solicitor General works within the United States Department of Justice; he or she is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

Among lawyers and jurists, the office of United States Solicitor General is generally considered to be the highest office for a practicing lawyer in the United States.

[edit] Traditions

The office of Solicitor General was founded in 1870, and some traditions have been established. Whenever the Solicitor General or one of his deputies argues a case before the Supreme Court he continues to wear late 19th century style dress, with striped pants, grey ascot, black vest, and a cutaway morning coat, making him a very distinctive sight in the courtroom.

Another, very substantive, tradition (that is possibly unique in the United States) is the Solicitor General's right and practice of confession of judgment in cases where he considers the Government's prior official position to be clearly unjust: he can just drop the case, even if the Government has already won in the lower courts. Solicitor General Paul Clement made such a confession in January 2005 regarding a law prohibiting the display of marijuana policy reform ads in public transportation. Clement stated in a letter to Congress that "the government does not have a viable argument to advance in the statute's defense."

[edit] Solicitors General Since 1870

Solicitor General	Date of Service	President
Benjamin H. Bristow	October 1870 - November 1872	Ulysses Grant
Samuel F. Phillips	November 1872 - May 1885	Ulysses Grant
John Goode (Acting)	May 1885 - August 1886	Grover Cleveland
George A. Jenks	July 1886 - May 1889	Grover Cleveland
Orlow W. Chapman	May 1889 - January 1890	Benjamin Harrison
William Howard Taft	February 1890 - March 1892
Charles H. Aldrich	March 1892 - May 1893
Lawrence Maxwell, Jr.	April 1893 - January 1895	Grover Cleveland
Holmes Conrad	February 1895 - July 1897	Grover Cleveland
John K. Richards	July 1897 - March 1903	William McKinley
Henry M. Hoyt	February 1903 - March 1909	Theodore Roosevelt
Lloyd Wheaton Bowers	April 1909 - September 1910	William Taft
Frederick W. Lehmann	December 1910 - July 1912
William Marshall Bullit	July 1912 - March 1913
John W. Davis	August 1913 - November 1918	Woodrow Wilson
Alexander C. King	November 1918 - May 1920
William L. Frierson	June 1920 - June 1921
James M. Beck	June 1921 - June 1925	Warren Harding
William D. Mitchell	June 1925 - March 1929	Calvin Coolidge
Charles Evans Hughes, Jr	May 1929 - April 1930	Herbert Hoover
Thomas D. Thacher	March 1930 - May 1933	Herbert Hoover
James Crawford Biggs	May 1933 - March 1935	Franklin Roosevelt
Stanley Reed	March 1935 - January 1938
Robert H. Jackson	March 1938 - January 1940
Francis Biddle	January 1940 - September 1941
Charles H. Fahy	November 1941 - September 1945
J. Howard McGrath	October 1945 - October 1946	Harry Truman
Philip B. Perlman	July 1947 - August 1952
Walter J. Cummings, Jr.	December 1952 - March 1953
Simon Sobeloff	February 1954 - July 1956	Dwight Eisenhower
J. Lee Rankin	August 1956 - January 1961	Dwight Eisenhower
Archibald Cox	January 1961 - July 1965	John F. Kennedy
Thurgood Marshall	August 1965 - August 1967	Lyndon Johnson
Erwin N. Griswold	October 1967 - June 1973	Lyndon Johnson
Robert H. Bork	June 1973 - January 1977	Richard Nixon
Wade H. McCree	March 1977 - August 1981	Jimmy Carter
Rex E. Lee	August 1981 - June 1985	Ronald Reagan
Charles Fried	October 1985 - January 1989	Ronald Reagan
Kenneth W. Starr	May 1989 - January 1993	George H. W. Bush
Drew S. Days, III	May 1993 - July 1996	Bill Clinton
Walter E. Dellinger III (acting)	August 1996 - October 1997
Seth P. Waxman	November 1997 - January 2001
Theodore Olson	June 2001 - July 2004	George W. Bush
Paul Clement	July 2004 - present	George W. Bush