Veteran Supreme Court reporter Tony Mauro reports for NLJ that the Court's bar is warming up to the possibility that George Conway of  Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz may be the next Solicitor General.  His abilities are being praised by many, and the fact that he has only argued one case in the high court is virtually irrelevant.

The fact that Conway has only argued once at the Supreme Court is not rare or disqualifying, according to Yale Law School scholar Lincoln Caplan, author of "The Tenth Justice," a 1997 book about the solicitor general's office. The newest justice, Elena Kagan, had never appeared in an appellate court before, and other 20th century SGs, including Robert Bork and Archibald Cox, had limited prior Supreme Court litigation experience.

The expectation that a new SG should be a veteran at the Supreme Court lectern, Caplan said, is the result of the "reconstitution" of the specialized Supreme Court bar. Decades ago, academics were often selected for the job, and "there was an expectation of intellectual capacity," not that they be able to argue a case on Day One. "You could be a great solicitor general and not argue a single case," leaving that chore to deputies in the office, Caplan said.

As I have noted before, oral argument is vastly overrated.  Justice Breyer says it is 2% of the Court's work, which sounds about right.

I had the pleasure of working with George on an amicus brief in the Second Circuit almost twelve years ago.  The question was whether the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits felon disenfranchisement laws so that even a convicted murderer in prison for life can vote from the slammer.  We prevailed (see Hayden v. Pataki, 449 F.3d 305), but the pro-murderer-voting crowd surprisingly got 5 votes on the 13-judge en banc court.