OPINION
As the eyes of the nation turn towards the U.S. Supreme Court for today’s argument on birthright citizenship, they will see New Jersey once again being excellently represented by its brilliant Solicitor General, Jeremy Feigenbaum. What many people may not realize is had this argument taken place just five years ago, New Jersey would not have been represented by a Solicitor General, because that office did not even exist. The creation and growth of a solicitor general’s office has been and will continue to be hugely beneficial to New Jersey’s interests – regardless of the party or administration in power. As a result, it should be considered one of the Murphy administration’s notable and underappreciated achievements.
Of course, states have been involved in appellate litigation throughout American history. (For example, New Jersey first defeated New York at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1831, and hasn’t lost since.) The United States has had a Solicitor General since 1870, but only a handful of states had an analogous state-level role until the late 1980s. Since then, the number of states that have a Solicitor General has grown from 8 to 44. The prominence of these offices has also increased drastically as state attorneys general have increasingly sought to challenge the actions of the federal government, especially when controlled by the opposite party (e.g. Republican state attorneys general during the Obama and Biden administrations, and Democratic state attorneys general during the Bush and Trump administrations).
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