Clement leaves Justice after seven-year stay

ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement announced his resignation yesterday, ending a seven-year run of arguing the Bush administration’s terrorism cases and other legal positions before the Supreme Court.

The conservative Mr. Clement will leave his post June 2 — a few weeks before the nation’s highest court adjourns for summer break.

A Justice official said Mr. Clement has no immediate plans other than spending the summer with his children.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey called Mr. Clement “one of the nation’s finest appellate lawyers.”

“I will miss not only Paul’s superb advocacy on behalf of the United States, but also his wise counsel and keen legal analysis,” Mr. Mukasey.

As the department’s No. 4 official for three years and principal deputy solicitor general for four years before that, Mr. Clement argued 49 cases before the Supreme Court. The court sided with Mr. Clement in “the vast majority of cases,” the Justice Department said, including:

•Gonzales v. Raich, upholding Congress’ right to ban medicinal marijuana over state laws allowing it.

•Gonzales v. Carhart, declaring laws prohibiting so-called partial birth abortions as constitutional.

•McConnell v. FEC, which found that disallowing “soft money” in political campaigns did not violate protections on free speech.

Mr. Clement also represented the government in Rumsfeld v. Padilla, arguing that the president could detain a U.S. citizen who had been designated an enemy combatant.

The Supreme Court did not reach a decision in the case, ruling that it had been improperly filed.

The court’s current term will conclude at the end of June. Mr. Clement will leave beforehand but plans to have all the government’s court filings on pending cases done before he goes.

Mr. Clement, a Wisconsin native, received degrees from Georgetown University and Cambridge University and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

He previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

He also worked stints as a chief counsel in the Senate, as a partner in law firm King & Spalding and as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.