The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the president of the United States on all legal matters. The attorney general is a statutory member of the Cabinet of the United States.
Elena Kagan is an American lawyer who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was appointed in 2010 by President Barack Obama and is the fourth woman to serve on the Court.
Neal Kumar Katyal is an American lawyer and legal scholar. He is a partner at the Hogan Lovells law firm and is the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Hill v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 573 (2006), was a United States Supreme Court case challenging the use of lethal injection as a form of execution in the state of Florida. The Court ruled unanimously that a challenge to the method of execution as violating the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution properly raised a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides a cause of action for civil rights violations, rather than under the habeas corpus provisions. Accordingly, that the prisoner had previously sought habeas relief could not bar the present challenge.
Beth S. Brinkmann is an American lawyer who served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice, heading up the appellate staff in the DOJ's Civil Division during the administration of President Barack Obama. She also served as Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States from 1993 through 2001. Brinkmann has argued 25 cases before the United States Supreme Court both in that role and in her later role as a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the firm Morrison & Foerster. Currently, Brinkmann is a partner at the Covington & Burling law firm in Washington, D.C.
Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. ___ (2017), is a Supreme Court of the United States case in which the Court determined, by a vote of 4–2, that non-U.S. citizens detained in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks cannot recover monetary damages from high level federal officials for the conditions of their confinement. The case was consolidated with Hastey v. Abbasi, and Ashcroft v. Abbasi. It was argued on January 18, 2017.
Ian Heath Gershengorn is an American lawyer and former acting Solicitor General of the United States under President Barack Obama.
Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services 682 F.3d 1 is a United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit decision that affirmed the judgment of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the section that defines the terms "marriage" as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" and "spouse" as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." Both courts found DOMA to be unconstitutional, though for different reasons. The trial court held that DOMA violates the Tenth Amendment and Spending Clause. In a companion case, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, the same judge held that DOMA violates the Equal Protection Clause. On May 31, 2012, the First Circuit held the act violates the Equal Protection Clause, while federalism concerns affect the equal protection analysis, DOMA does not violate the Spending Clause or Tenth Amendment.
Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 563 U.S. 754 (2011), is a United States Supreme Court case. The case considered whether a party, in order to "actively [induce] infringement of a patent" under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b), must know that the induced act constitutes patent infringement, or whether deliberate indifference to the existence of a patent can be considered a form of actual knowledge. In an 8–1 decision delivered by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court held that induced infringement requires knowledge of patent infringement, but because the petitioners had knowledge of a patent infringement lawsuit involving the respondent and Sunbeam Products over the same invention, the Federal Circuit's judgement that petitioners induced infringement must be affirmed under the doctrine of willful blindness.
Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I, is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court upheld Congress's power to enact most provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly called Obamacare, and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA), including a requirement for most Americans to pay a penalty for forgoing health insurance by 2014. The Acts represented a major set of changes to the American health care system that had been the subject of highly contentious debate, largely divided on political party lines.
Curtis E. Gannon is an American lawyer. He is a Deputy Solicitor General, a career position, in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. He previously served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice. He was appointed to this position on January 20, 2017, by President Donald Trump.
Jeffrey Bryan Wall is an American attorney and former government official who served as the acting Solicitor General of the United States and the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States during the first presidency of Donald Trump. He is now a partner and head of Supreme Court and Appellate Practice at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and Washington, DC.
Michael R. Dreeben is a former Deputy Solicitor General who was in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice criminal docket before the United States Supreme Court. He is recognized as an expert in U.S. criminal law.
Eric David Miller is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Sharp v. Murphy, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a Supreme Court of the United States case of whether Congress disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. After holding the case from the 2018 term, the case was decided on July 9, 2020, in a per curiam decision following McGirt v. Oklahoma that, for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, the reservations were never disestablished and remain Indian country.
Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt, 587 U.S. 230 (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case that determined that unless they consent, states have sovereign immunity from private suits filed against them in the courts of another state. The 5–4 decision overturned precedent set in a 1979 Supreme Court case, Nevada v. Hall. This was the third time that the litigants had presented their case to the Court, as the Court had already ruled on the issue in 2003 and 2016.
Peter v. NantKwest Inc., 589 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case from the October 2019 term.
Brian Fletcher is an American lawyer who serves as the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States. He served as Acting Solicitor General from August 11, 2021, until Elizabeth Prelogar's confirmation on October 21, 2021.
Henry Charles Whitaker is an American legal scholar who has served as the Solicitor General of Florida since 2021. Previously he was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice in the District of Columbia.
