A First Argument in the Tradition of Many

INTRODUCTION I first argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on March 23, 1994. I knew when I was hired as an Assistant to the Solicitor General that my job would be to brief and to argue cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the United States. So when the time came for my first argument, I was ready--ready, that is, for the legal argument and for the difficult questions. I was not prepared, however, for the tremendous sense of honor that I felt when I entered the courtroom that day. I had experienced a similar feeling when I served as a law clerk to Justice Blackmun several years earlier. The majesty of the Supreme Court building is awe-inspiring even to a casual visitor, and actually working in the building and participating in the business of the Court is the opportunity of a lifetime. The same is true of appearing as an oral advocate before the Supreme Court. I have had the good fortune of arguing eighteen more cases there over the past nine years, and I have felt the same sense of honor each time, including the day last year when I argued before the Court for the first time as a lawyer in private practice. Regardless of the number of times that an attorney appears before the Court, the responsibility to the client is always tremendous and the broader significance of the case is inescapable. That responsibility and significance are the driving forces behind an attorney who engages in the rigorous preparation that a Supreme Court argument demands. THE PREPARATION When I began work as an Assistant to the Solicitor General in December 1993, it was unclear when I would be given my first oral-argument assignment. The Court had just completed its third of seven argument sessions for the Term. The Justices would hear argument again for six days during each of the remaining four argument sessions. There was not enough time for me to brief a case that would be argued during the January or February argument sessions, so I hoped that I would get an assignment for March or April, but that depended on which cases the Court decided to hear and which were not already being handled by one of the other attorneys in the office. I knew that I might have to wait until the next Term, which would begin the following October. The precise date of my first argument did not preoccupy me for long, however, because my workload would not permit such a distraction. I immersed myself in drafting briefs for the Supreme Court and writing recommendations for the Solicitor General. At the same time, I tried to take advantage of the opportunities available to watch oral arguments before the Court, especially arguments by other attorneys in the office. Because the Office of the Solicitor General handles all of the work for the United States in the Supreme Court, attorneys who have worked in the office are the most experienced advocates before the Court. That is particularly true of the Deputy Solicitors General, three of whom are career attorneys who have argued cases for decades. So I made sure to attend oral arguments by several of the Deputies, as well as those of Solicitor General Drew S. Days, III, who was an experienced Supreme Court advocate from his time as an Assistant Attorney General in the late 1970s. I also went up to the Court to watch other well-known advocates and other Assistants argue when I could take an hour out of my workday. Of course, I had watched many arguments during the 1986-1987 Term when I served as a law clerk, but now that I was preparing to stand at the podium myself, that seemed a very long time ago and my memory of the details was vague. Moreover, watching arguments with the knowledge that I would be the one having to answer the Justices' questions in the near future significantly altered my perspective. I now found myself not only analyzing the legal arguments of the advocates, but also their argument strategies and styles, as I waited for my turn. …