In the
United States, the
principal role of the Solicitor General is to represent the United States in
litigation before the
U.S. Supreme Court. In more important cases, the Solicitor General will
appear personally before the Court; however, the duty of participating in
oral argument is frequently
delegated to lower-level
attorneys in the
Office of the Solicitor General. It is also the
responsibility of the Solicitor General's Office to review all cases in which courts have decided against the U.S.
government in order to determine which
decisions should be
appealed, and what
arguments the government should make on appeal. Additionally, in cases in which the United States government is not a
party, the Solicitor General decides whether the government should seek
leave to file an
amicus curiae brief.
The need for a "Solicitor General,"
subordinate to, but largely
independent from, the
Attorney General, is a
function of the gradual increase in the responsibilities of the Attorney General, who originally occupied the position of the Solicitor General today:
[T]here shall * * * be appointed a * * * person, learned in the law, to act as attorney-general for the United States, * * * whose duty it shall be to prosecute and conduct all suits in the Supreme Court in which the United States shall be concerned, and to give his advice and opinion upon questions of law when required by the President of the United States, or when requested by the heads of any of the departments, touching any matters that may concern their departments.
Act of Sept. 24, 1789, ch. 20, § 35, 1 Stat. 73, 93. The attorney-general of the early years was paid one half of the
standard salary for
cabinet members, and was expected to have enough time on his hands to make most of his money from
private sector employment. The attorney-general was not in
charge of a cabinet department. The attorney-general's responsibilities were poorly defined, and it was often unclear what
relationship should exist between the Attorney-General's Office and the various
federal district attorneys.
Eventually, the AG's authority over district attorneys (now
United States Attorneys) was solidified. Gradually, however, the Office became
overextended, leading to substantial
expenditures for the hiring of
outside counsel. It became impossible for the AG to handle the primary duty of handling Supreme Court
litigation. This led, in the late
Nineteenth Century, to the creation of the Office of the Solicitor General.
The current Solicitor General is
Theodore Olson, who had previously argued in such cases as
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) (Representing
George W. Bush) and
Koon v. United States, 518 US 81 (1996) (representing the
police officers involved in the
Rodney King beating).