Greg Garre Joining Elite Club With 50 Supreme Court Arguments

Latham & Watkins Greg Garre will argue before the Supreme Court for the 50th time, and he still has the same nervous energy as when he appeared before the justices for the first time 25 years ago.

Garre will represent Oklahoma on Wednesday in a case about states’ right to exclude religious schools from charter-school programs in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond.

Garre will join a handful of attorneys to have argued 50 or more cases at the high court.

“The great thing about arguing cases before the court is it really is almost like the first argument in terms of nerves,” said Garre, who is a George Washington University law graduate.

He acknowledged the first time an attorney takes the lectern, “you don’t know if words are going to come out of your mouth.” But even after getting over that hurdle, most lawyers still “fear having a case meltdown in front of the court,” Garre said.

“As a lawyer, it’s probably the most exposed that you can be,” he said. “It’s you standing up there in front of the nine of the most brilliant legal minds in the world.”

Still, the excitement of being up there is why he “keeps going back for more punishment.”

Endurance Contest

That “punishment” has changed a lot in years since Garre first took the lectern in 2000. Most notably, the court’s membership has changed drastically.

Early in his high court career, “we had the most stable court almost in history.”

With the confirmation of Justice Stephen Breyer in 1994, there wasn’t a new member until Chief Justice John Roberts joined in 2005.

Since 2017, four justices have been confirmed. Only Justice Clarence Thomas remains from Garre’s first argument.

“That has been fascinating to watch,” Garre said, referring to the dynamics among the court’s new membership.

The most dramatic change has been the length of arguments, he said.

Particularly under Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who Garre clerked for during the 1992 term, scheduled argument times were strictly enforced.

It was at times hard to get arguments out and answers were sometimes limited to a single sentence, Garre said. No matter where you were in your argument, Rehnquist cut you off when the time was up, he said.

After the pandemic, when the court has added an additional segment of seriatim questioning, the arguments frequently go beyond the scheduled arguments times, sometimes significantly over.

That gives the lawyers and the justices more breathing room, Garre said. Whereas before it was a “feeding frenzy” it now “more of an endurance contest,” he said.

That’s particularly true when more than two attorneys argue a case. Garre will be the last of four attorneys arguing the Oklahoma case.

‘General’ Garre

The club of people with 50 arguments includes longtime government lawyers Edwin Kneedler, Michael Dreeben, and Malcolm Stewart. Private attorneys Paul Clement, Lisa Blatt, Neal Katyal, Seth Waxman, Donald Verrilli, and Jeffrey Fisher are also on the list.

Most members have tallied a significant number of arguments while working at the US Solicitor General’s Office, the federal government’s representative at the court. Garre said just under half of his cases came while there, including his first. Back then, he was an assistant to the solicitor general.

He later rejoined the office to serve as the principal deputy and then solicitor general under President George W. Bush. In that role, he argued some of the government’s most important cases on national security.

Since 2009, Garre has been a partner at Latham & Watkins where, among other cases, he twice successfully represented the University of Texas at Austin in a challenge to its affirmative action policies.

In 2023, the newly constituted 6-3 conservative court overturned similar programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Garre said that while, “in a lot of ways, there’s no greater client than the United States itself,” he said there’s “a special relationship between a lawyer and client in private practice.”

Even when the government loses a case, it’s still going to go on, Garre said. He’s also represented private client whose life was on the line and companies facing dire consequences. That’s “extremely rewarding,” Garre said.

Still, he said the best thing about being solicitor general is that the justices call you “general.”