According to a new study released on May 8, Indian-American attorney Neal Katyal argued the most number of cases before the Supreme Court in 2016.This information was confirmed by Katyal’s law firm Hogan Lovells.
Katyal argued almost 10 percent of all 64 cases, or six of them, before the high court during this term, according to an analysis from lawyer Adam Feldman at Empirical SCOTUS. Katyal, a former Acting U.S. Solicitor General during the Obama administration, has argued a total of 34 cases before the Supreme Court, 32 of them in the last 8 years. In 2016-2017 alone, he argued 7 cases in 6 separate arguments before the nation’s highest court, according to Hogan Lovells.
“Neal Katyal was far and away the most active attorney at arguments this year,” Feldman wrote. “Katyal led all other attorneys in arguments even when including federal government participation.”
This, according to Empirical Scotusa new study put out May 8, by the news site that monitors attorneys, 6 cases is higher than any other attorney in the country argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016.
At the age of 47, Katyal has argued more Supreme Court cases in U.S. history than has any attorney from a minority community, i.e. Indian-American, except for African American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall with whom he is currently tied. He has fought and won cases for and against the federal government.
As Acting Solicitor General of the United States, Katyal successfully argued cases for the federal government. For instance, he defended the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; his victory in the case defending former Attorney General John Ashcroft for alleged abuses in the war on terror; he won a unanimous victory against 8 states who sued the nation’s leading power plants for contributing to global warming, among them.
While in the Justice Department, he served as Counsel of Record hundreds of times in the U.S. Supreme Court, according to his biography on the Hogan Lovell’s website. He was also the only head of the Solicitor General’s office to argue a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, on whether certain aspects of the human genome were patentable,
He has other firsts to his name. He has served for almost 2 decades as a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was one of the youngest professors to have received tenure and a chaired professorship in the university’s history.
“Neal Katyal was far and away the most active attorney at arguments this year (Katyal led all other attorneys in arguments even when including federal government participation),” Empirical Scotus said. “Amazingly, Katyal’s six arguments accounted for over 9% of all arguments before the Court this term,” it added.
The graduate of Yale Law School, Katyal also served in the Deputy Attorney General’s Office at the Justice Department as National Security Advisor and as Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General during 1998-1999.
