Elizabeth Prelogar testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Elizabeth Prelogar testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing to be U.S. solicitor general on Sept. 14, 2021. Image via Committee Video

Ten months into the Biden administration, the Office of U.S. Solicitor General now has a Senate-confirmed leader after lawmakers approved Elizabeth Prelogar's nomination.

The Senate voted 53-36 Thursday to confirm the Harvard Law graduate, who clerked for Attorney General Merrick Garland when he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and later for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.

Prelogar is only the second Senate-confirmed female solicitor general. Kagan was the first and served during the Obama administration until her confirmation in 2010 to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Prelogar's confirmation comes just days before one of the most critical weeks of the Supreme Court term. The justices on Monday hear arguments in two cases stemming from Texas' enactment of one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the country. Two days later, they take up a major Second Amendment gun rights challenge. And on Dec. 1, they will hear arguments in a Mississippi case posing a direct challenge to the court's landmark abortion rights decisions, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Prelogar originally was appointed principal deputy solicitor general but assumed the position of acting solicitor general at the start of the Biden administration in January while the administration considered potential candidates for the position. But when the president chose her to fill the solicitor general vacancy, she was required by the federal Vacancy Reform Act to step aside from the acting position while awaiting Senate confirmation.

Stanford Law School's Brian Fletcher, also a former Ginsburg and Garland clerk, has been acting solicitor general since Aug. 11. He joined the Stanford faculty in September 2020 as an associate professor and co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic. Before that, he was an assistant to the solicitor general for five years during which he argued 13 cases.

As an assistant to the solicitor general from 2014 to 2019, Prelogar argued seven cases in the Supreme Court. During that time, Prelogar was asked to serve on the Special Counsel's Russia investigation and was an assistant special counsel to Robert Mueller III. As acting solicitor general, Prelogar argued two cases in the 2020-21 Supreme Court term and received high marks from her colleagues in the Supreme Court bar.

After leaving the Justice Department in 2019, she joined the law firm Cooley. Prelogar, who is fluent in Russian, previously completed a master's degree in creative writing at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, earned her undergraduate degree in English and Russian from Emory University, and was a Fulbright Fellow in St. Petersburg, Russia. Born and raised in Idaho, Prelogar lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and their two sons.

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