Jonathan F. Mitchell

Jonathan F. Mitchell (born September 2, 1976)^[1] is an American attorney, academic, and former government official. From 2010 to 2015, he was the Solicitor General of Texas. He has argued five cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.^[2] He has served on the faculties of Stanford Law School, the University of Texas School of Law, the George Mason University School of Law, and the University of Chicago Law School.^[3] In 2018, he opened a private legal practice in Austin, Texas.

Mitchell has helped to author anti-abortion bills.^[4] In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order declining to enjoin the enforcement of a Texas anti-abortion bill, which bans abortion after cardiac activity is detected, pending the resolution of constitutional challenges against the law.^[4]

Early life and education[]

Mitchell was raised in a religious Christian home in Pennsylvania.^[4] He had six brothers.^[4] He attended Wheaton College, an Evangelical liberal arts college in Illinois.^[4] Mitchell received a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 2001. He was an articles editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and a member of Order of the Coif.

Career[]

After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 2001 to 2002, and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court from 2002 to 2003. After clerking, he served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice.^[5] He was appointed as Solicitor General of Texas in 2010. He was a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2015 to 2016.

After his tenure as Solicitor General of Texas, Mitchell sought out academic appointments, but failed to find a tenure track position.^[4] After Donald Trump became president, Mitchell sought positions in the Donald Trump administration.^[4] Trump unsuccessfully nominated Mitchell to serve as the chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS).^[6][5] In 2018, Mitchell created his own one-person law firm.^[4]

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas anti-abortion bill that Mitchell helped to write.^[4] In 2021, an increasingly conservative Supreme Court issued an order declining to enjoin the enforcement of a Texas anti-abortion bill (the Texas Heartbeat Act) from going into effect, pending the resolution of constitutional challenges to the bill. The challenged Texas bill bans abortion after cardiac activity is detectable.^[4][7][8][9]

Mitchell has argued cases and written briefs before the Supreme Court of the United States.^[10][11] In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Mitchell and a colleague authored an amicus brief on behalf of Texas Right to Life, arguing that overturning Roe v. Wade could lead to the reversal of other "lawless" court decisions such as those establishing a right to same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), while distinguishing and defending the right to interracial marriage recognized in Loving v. Virginia.^[12]

Publications[]

• The Writ-of-Erasure Fallacy, 104 Va. L. Rev. 934 (2018).
• Textualism and the Fourteenth Amendment, 69 Stan. L. Rev. 1237 (2017).
• Remembering the Boss, 84 U. Chi. L. Rev. 2291 (2017).
• Commentary, Capital Punishment and the Courts, 120 Harv. L. Rev. Forum 269 (2017).
• Judicial Review and the Future of Federalism, 49 Ariz. St. L. J. 1091 (2017).
• Stare Decisis and Constitutional Text, 110 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (2011).
• Reconsidering Murdock: State-Law Reversals as Constitutional Avoidance, 77 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1335 (2010).
• Legislating Clear-Statement Regimes in National-Security Law, 43 Ga. L. Rev. 1059 (2009).
• Apprendi’s Domain, 2006 Sup. Ct. Rev. 297.

See also[]

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

References[]

External links[]

• Biography at Stanford Law School
• Jonathan Mitchell on C-SPAN
• Appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court from the Oyez Project
• Jonathan F. Mitchell's SSRN page