U.S. Solicitor General to Present 'Public Leadership' Lecture

by Alan Hunt, associate director of media relations, (254) 710-6271

Paul D. Clement, the Solicitor General of the United States, will be the featured speaker for Baylor University's Public Leadership Series at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 5, in the Jim Kronzer Appellate Advocacy Classroom and Courtroom (room 127) at the Sheila and Walter Umphrey Law Center. The program is free and open to the public.

Clement is the 43rd Solicitor General of the United States. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on March 14, 2005, confirmed by the United States Senate on June 8, 2005, and took the oath of office on June 13, 2005. His campus visit is co-sponsored by Baylor's Office of Public Affairs, the Baylor Law School and the Student Bar Association.

The Public Leadership Series is an initiative at Baylor designed to increase understanding of government and the ideal of public service in society. Asa Hutchinson, director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration at the time, delivered the inaugural lecture in September 2002. Baylor graduate and former Texas Gov. Ann Richards was the second speaker in the Public Leadership Series in April 2003, and Dr. Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, spoke in April 2004.

"The Public Leadership Series is intended to serve as a reminder that our government is of the people, by the people and for the people," said James Odom, director of Baylor's Office of Public Affairs. "Baylor students will inhabit positions of public trust in the future, and greater understanding of the functions of government and the human stories of public officials should encourage students to serve in the governmental arena. As one of the youngest Solicitors General in U.S. history, Paul Clement is a tremendous example of commitment and intelligence quickly rewarded with significant responsibility."

"We are very pleased to host the Solicitor General," said Brad Toben, dean of Baylor Law School. "Mr. Clement has made a deep impression upon those who follow the work of the U.S. Supreme Court and the advocates who appear before the Court. He has earned bi-partisan accolades as an advocate of singular ability, and we will be in this appearance the beneficiaries of his insightful and learned perspectives on the Court and his work before it."

Clement is a native of Cedarburg, Wis., and received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a master's degree in economics from Cambridge University. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School where he was the Supreme Court editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Following graduation, Clement clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, he worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Kirkland & Ellis. Clement went on to serve as Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights. Afterwards, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of King & Spalding, where he headed the firm's appellate practice. Clement also served from 1998-2004 as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught a seminar on the separation of powers.

Clement joined the Department of Justice in February 2001. Before his confirmation as Solicitor General, he served as Acting Solicitor General for nearly a year and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General. He has argued more than 30 cases before the United States Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, United States v. Booker and Gonzales v. Raich. He also argued many of the key cases in the lower courts involving challenges to the President's conduct of the war on terrorism.

The major function of the Solicitor General's Office is to supervise and conduct government litigation in the United States Supreme Court. Virtually all such litigation is channeled through the Office of the Solicitor General and is actively conducted by the Office. The United States is involved in about two-thirds of all the cases the U.S. Supreme Court decides on the merits each year.

The Solicitor General determines the cases in which Supreme Court review will be sought by the government and the positions the government will take before the Court. The Office's staff attorneys participate in preparing the petitions, briefs and other papers filed by the government in its Supreme Court litigation. The Solicitor General personally assigns the oral argument of government cases in the Supreme Court. Those cases not argued by the Solicitor General personally are assigned either to an attorney in the Office or to another government attorney. The vast majority of government cases are argued by the Solicitor General or by one of the Office's other attorneys.

For more information about the Solicitor General's talk at Baylor, contact the Office of Public Affairs at (254) 710-1421.