Obama Selects Donald Verrilli as Solicitor General
President Obama is preparing to nominate a White House deputy counsel and prominent litigator, Donald B. Verrilli Jr., to be solicitor general of the United States, the White House confirmed on Monday. The position has been vacant since Elena Kagan became a Supreme Court associate justice last year.
Mr. Verrilli, whose potential candidacy for the position has long been rumored in Washington legal policy circles, would – if confirmed by the Senate – become one of the most important faces of the Obama administration’s legal team, the person to argue crucial cases, like the constitutionality of the health insurance law, before the Supreme Court.
Mr. Verrilli joined the Obama legal team in 2009, as an associate deputy attorney general at the Justice Department. There, his portfolio included national security matters, and he undertook a special project to create a new policy on the use of the state secrets privilege. The policy requires high-level approval before government lawyers may invoke the privilege in an effort to shield sensitive information from lawsuits.
A year ago, Mr. Verrilli moved to the office of the White House Counsel, where he has primarily worked on domestic legal policy matters including immigration, health care, financial reform and the BP oil spill.
Before joining the administration, Mr. Verrilli spent two decades as a prominent litigator with the law firm of Jenner & Block, where he was chairman of its Supreme Court practice group, while also teaching First Amendment law as an adjunct professor at Georgetown law school.
He participated in more than 100 Supreme Court cases and argued 12 of them. He has also argued about 35 times before federal appeals courts and state supreme courts.
A specialist in First Amendment, telecommunications and intellectual property law, he played a role in several important cases about copyright law in the Internet era – including representing the music industry in a 2005 lawsuit against the file-sharing service Grokster, and Viacom in a 2007 case against Google.
A Yale University undergraduate, he graduated from Columbia law school, where he was editor-in-chief of the law review, and went on to clerk for Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.
Still, several prominent conservative lawyers said they hoped Mr. Verrilli would be confirmed. Among them, Theodore Olson, who served as solicitor general for President George W. Bush, said he had worked closely with Mr. Verrilli on numerous legal cases and that he “couldn’t imagine anyone more qualified” to be solicitor general.
Mr. Verrilli “is intellectually sharp, invariably exceedingly well prepared, well liked by the people he works with and the people who are his subordinates,” Mr. Olsen said. “He is a very, very fine constitutional lawyer.”
And Miguel Estrada, a prominent conservative appellate lawyer, said in an-email that “it is a fantastic pick and great new role for a humble yet accomplished lawyer and public servant.”
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