Abstract
One window into the soul of a presidential administration is the work of the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), the representative of the executive branch before the Supreme Court of the United States. This could be particularly true in the case of a president who is a lawyer with work experience as a law professor. This article examines the Obama administration’s OSG efforts in filing voluntary amicus curiae briefs before the Supreme Court. In performing this task, the OSG is at the height of its discretion vis-à-vis the demands, implicit or otherwise, of the Supreme Court and most free to represent the unadulterated views of the administration.
This article discusses the thirteen amicus briefs filed by the Obama OSG during the Court’s 2008 term, and provides an in-depth discussion of seven of these cases that the Court ultimately ruled upon during the 2008 term. The article analyzes the Obama OSG’s amicus choices and its level of success before the Supreme Court by looking at two important measures: whether the final outcome of the case is congruent with the OSG’s position and whether the OSG’s views were incorporated in the majority opinion.
Recommended Citation
Karen Swenson,
President Obama’s Policy Agenda in the Supreme Court: What We Know So Far From the Office of the Solicitor General’s Service as Amicus Curiae,
34
S. Ill. U. L.J.
359
(2010).
Available at:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/siulj/vol34/iss2/5