Three weeks after D. John Sauer was confirmed as the 49th solicitor general, law professor and podcast co-host William Baude speculated that Sauer might be “either fired or disbarred by the time his term is up.” Baude’s co-host, Dan Epps, was discussing the dilemma that, in their view, Sauer likely faced – navigating the tensions between his obligations as the government’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court and the expectations of Donald Trump, the president who appointed him.

More than 16 months later, Sauer is still on the job. Although the briefs that he has filed and the arguments that he has made before the justices have at times seemed unorthodox – appearing to echo language used by Trump himself – he has largely appeared to pull off a tricky balancing act.

As Stephen Wermiel recently wrote for this blog, when Congress created the role of solicitor general in 1870, it required the occupant of the office to be “learned in the law.” Solicitors general have such a unique relationship with the court that they are sometimes referred to as the “tenth justice”: they not only have an office at the court, but the court often seeks their advice on whether to grant review in cases in which the federal government is not involved – a maneuver known as a “call for the views of the solicitor general.” At his Executive Functions substack, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith wrote in April 2025 that, “[b]ecause of the SG’s special role before the Court, the office has traditionally had in practice (though not in law) strong independence from the Attorney General and the president.”

When Trump nominated him in November 2024, Sauer’s resume resembled those of others who had preceded him in the job. A former college wrestler at Duke University, Sauer studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar before going on to Harvard Law School and a clerkship for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. As the solicitor general of Missouri, Sauer argued (and won) a high-profile death penalty case in 2018 before going into private practice.

But one qualification in particular stood out: Sauer had successfully represented then-candidate Trump in 2024 as his private lawyer in the prosecution brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. In Trump v. United States, the court agreed with Sauer that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts while in office.

Solicitor General Sauer’s SCOTUS tightrope | SCOTUSblog