George Conway III is among the candidates President-elect Donald Trump is considering for U.S. solicitor general, the nation’s top appeals lawyer, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
George Conway is the husband of Trump senior-advisor Kellyanne Conway.
The solicitor general represents the U.S. government in all litigation before the Supreme Court. The SG is the primary advocate representing most federal agencies before the Court, and often files amicus (or “friend of the court”) briefs in cases where the government has a significant interest. Even if the U.S. is not party to a case the high court is hearing, the justices will often solicit the SG’s views. As a result, the solicitor general’s office is typically involved in some capacity with two-thirds of the cases the Court decides annually, leading some to refer to the SG as the “10th justice.”
Conway currently practices law at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a powerhouse white-shoe law firm based in New York. Though Conway has only argued one case before the Supreme Court, he has argued many cases in federal appeals courts around the country. It is not necessarily unusual that a practitioner with little experience at the high court would be appointed solicitor general. Justice Elena Kagan had not argued a single case at the high court when she was appointed SG by President Barack Obama in 2009. (RELATED: Trump Can End Obama’s Most Important Lawsuits Once He Takes Office)
Conway is a graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Review. After graduating he clerked for Judge Ralph Winter on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the 1990s he wrote a Supreme Court brief concerning Paula Jones’s sexual harassment lawsuit against. President Bill Clinton, and was part of the team of lawyers that ultimately exposed the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
If appointed and confirmed by the Senate, he would be the first solicitor general ever portrayed by Saturday Night Live.
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