The Solicitor General and the Shadow Docket

[Disir]

For almost as long as there has been a Solicitor General of the United States (150 years next June ), there has been debate over the unique functions and obligations of the office. It’s not just that the Solicitor General is one of the only federal officers who, by statute, must be “learned in the law.” Besides the Vice President, the Solicitor General is the only federal officer with formal offices in multiple branches of the federal government — in both the main building of the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court. And the Solicitor General does not just have a physical presence at the Supreme Court; the Court’s rules and traditions both formally and informally privilege the Solicitor General as the de facto head of the Court’s bar — and show special solicitude to the Solicitor General across a constellation of considerations.6 With these special privileges come special responsibilities. As Simon Sobeloff (Solicitor General from 1954 to 1956) put it, “[t]he Solicitor General is not a neutral, he is an advocate; but an advocate for a client whose business is not merely to prevail in the instant case. My client’s chief business is not to achieve victory, but to establish justice.”
The Solicitor General and the Shadow Docket

Here is the pdf
http://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/123-163_Online.pdf


Another lengthy read but also worth it.