Neal Katyal

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Neal Katyal

The Times of India

PIO Neal Katyal poised to become US solicitor general

Chidanand Rajghatta | TNN The Times of India

Washington: While attention is focused on President Barack Obama’s choice of US solicitor general Elena Kagan as a nominee for the Supreme Court, her putative promotion has pitchforked an Indian-American legal whiz Neal Katyal to the position she will vacate as the US governments top legal counsel.

In a letter she sent to the Supreme Court on Monday, Kagan told the country’s highest judicial forum that in light of her nomination to the Supreme Court, the principal deputy solicitor general, Neal Kumar Katyal, will serve as acting solicitor general in all filings involving the US government after the date of her nomination. ‘‘I ask that you please address future correspondence from the court to him, and that the court’s docket sheets reflect his designation as counsel of record,’’ she advised the court in a May 17 letter.

As in India, the US solicitor general represents the US Government before the Supreme Court, typically determining the legal position that the government will take in the court. In addition to supervising and conducting cases in which the government is a party, the solicitor general’s office also files amicus curiae briefs in cases in which the federal government has a significant interest in a legal issue.

The US solicitor general is usually assisted by four deputies and seventeen attorney assistants; three of the deputies are career attorneys in the department of justice, while the remaining one, known the ‘‘principal deputy’’, is a political appointee. Katyal, a Yale Law School alumnus, was named the principal deputy SG by President Obama in 2009, and his filling in for Kagan suggests that he is in line for confirmation of the top job.

Katyal’s rapid rise does not come as a surprise. Before his appointment as principal SG, he served as national security adviser in the US justice department in 1997-1999, and was commissioned by then president Clinton to write a report on the need for more legal pro bono work. He also served as then vicepresident Al Gore’s co-counsel in Bush vs Gore of 2000.

Although he has argued very few cases before the Supreme Court, Katyal made a mark as the lead counsel for the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the Supreme Court case Hamdan vs Rumsfeld, which held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay ‘‘violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions’’. He successfully defended Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur, forcing Congres to devise an alternative plan to George W Bush’s military commissions.

Asked once why he took up the case, Katyal referred to his immigrant background, recalling that his parents had come to a country where they thought people were treated equally.