When one thinks of the federal government's top lawyer, Attorney General Loretta Lynch immediately comes to mind.
But there's another lawyer, far less visible but no less influential, that matters enormously to the United States on every case where the country needs a defender before the Supreme Court. That's the solicitor general.
A group of men who previously held the position, with service experience under every president since George H.W. Bush, sent a letter earlier this week to the Senate heaping praise on Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's choice to sit on the high court.
"Judge Garland has demonstrated the temperament, intellect, and experience to serve in this capacity" and "has a history of excellence in the law," read the May 2 letter addressed to Senate leadership, including Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the top two Republicans with direct control over ensuring Garland gets a hearing and a vote.
These lawyers should know. The Office of the Solicitor General is a workhorse in our constitutional system, serving dual roles as an officer before the Supreme Court and as a representative of the federal government. In April alone, the office took part in all 10 cases the Supreme Court heard during its final sitting of the current term, which ended last week.
Collectively, the signatories to the letter, made public Thursday, have argued hundreds of cases before the Supreme Court and represent a virtual who's who among advocates who regularly appear before the justices.
One of them, Theodore Olson, was named solicitor general shortly after winning Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court case that effectively handed the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush. Olson's successor, Paul Clement, was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, and over the years defended conservative positions before the Supreme Court on gun rights, same-sex marriage and the Affordable Care Act, among dozens of other disputes.
That these lawyers agreed that Obama's pick is "superbly qualified" to serve on the high court -- despite working for administrations with widely divergent views on the Constitution and the rule of law -- is a feat in itself.
"We are confident that Judge Garland would bring his brilliance, work ethic, and broad experience to the cases that come before him," the letter read.
Doom-and-gloom ads from conservative groups, fearful that Scalia's replacement will tilt the Supreme Court liberal for the first time in decades, have sought to paint a different picture: Garland as something of a liberal extremist in areas such as the Second Amendment and labor issues.
But if that were true, the bipartisan letter by these former government lawyers, many of whom are now in private practice at prominent law firms, would go against the very things they've stood for in court.
Clement, for example, counts as clients a number of business interests with pending cases before the Supreme Court. As recently as this Monday, the justices turned away one of his cases, a high-stakes constitutional challenge to Seattle's minimum wage law -- presumably because such a case needs a full nine-member court for proper resolution. If Garland is as anti-business as his worst critics claim, then he might have not been much help in such a case.
Crucially, the letter doesn't take the extra step of urging McConnell and Grassley to schedule a hearing for Garland, who has been waiting more than 50 days since Obama nominated him. As of Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair was standing firm by his position of no hearing and no votes for Garland until after the election.
"Senator Grassley has made it clear that he wants the American people to have a voice in the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system of government," read a statement by Grassley's office issued Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Maybe Senate Republicans, in the same spirit of bipartisanship, should accept the solicitors general's letter for what it is: a good-faith expression that Garland truly is the kind of across-the-aisle jurist for such a time as now -- and quite likely a better choice than anyone they might get under a President Donald Trump.