LIVE EVENT: Defending the Constitution at the Supreme Court with the Office of the Solicitor General

So there's a lot of law students who are actually in here and they have not yet had the opportunity to practice law.

And there's members of the public who will be watching this when it's released.

And so before we get into some of the substantive issues, can you tell me each of you just what a day looks like in the Solicitor General's office that someone might not expect from the outside? I mean, what, what's something that's very unique to the way that you guys work on a daily basis?

One thing that occurs to me is that it's a unique law practice because it has a very special relationship with the U.S. Supreme Court.

It isn't the only thing we do, but so much of what we do is focused on advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court.

So there's a special relationship with one particular court.

And of course, that's something we take very seriously.

And it suffuses everything that we do is focusing on how are we going to advocate effectively to the U.S. Supreme Court, maintaining a really important and special relationship with them.

So that's very important.

Also, it can be extremely demanding.

And as you alluded to earlier, in terms of time and hours, we find there are a lot of late nights and there is a lot of stuff that's done under intense time pressure.

But I like to think that our team is outstanding and we do our best to maintain the highest level of excellence in everything that we do.

And I've been really proud.

And one of the things that was really one of the most sort of eye-opening experiences for me coming from mid-Missouri out to Washington, D.C., was the level of advocacy in the team, a very really small team in the U.S.

Solicitor General's office.

We have, I guess, 25 attorneys, including the Bristos, and not counting me, and that's a relatively small group, to be handling a very large amount of Supreme Court litigation and doing it at the highest level of excellence at all times.

I would say the day-to-day is, is this a today problem or is this not a today problem? Especially because the pace of litigation, especially things funneling up to the Supreme Court from the start of this administration was unprecedented in a lot of ways.

You know, it's frequently touted in the media.

We've had more Supreme Court emergency applications at a faster pace on a sort of wider range of issues than anyone else before.

That's slowed down a little bit now, but it is still a perennial part of everything we do.

And so there's always one part of the job that is, are we about to go to the Supreme Court on something? Do we need to think about going to the Supreme Court on something? things that are bubbling up in the courts of appeals are also part of our job because the SG has the ultimate decision-making power, are we gonna appeal something or not? So it's not just everything in the Supreme Court, it's everything that might come to the Supreme Court at a very, very rapid clip.

And I love that, but it does force you to be very disciplined in decision-making.

What do you need to do today? What do you need to do this week? What do you hopefully not see again?

I'll just pick up a little bit on where Sarah left off, which is, you know, everyone knows that the office, a big part of what we do is the Supreme court litigation, but a big part of what the office's job is.

And I think actually one of the most important parts of what the job is, is sort of a centralizing function of determining what our appellate positions can be in the lower courts.