Early career He then went into private practice with the
Washington, D.C. law firm
Hogan & Hartson from 1993 to 2000. In September 2000 Garre joined the
Office of the Solicitor General at the
Department of Justice as Assistant to the Solicitor General. In this capacity, in August 2002, he represented the government at
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld 243 F. Supp. 2d 527 (
E.D. Va. 2002), notable as "the first in modern American jurisprudence in which an American citizen has been indefinitely detained without charges and without access to a lawyer", and endured aggressive questioning from Judge
Robert G. Doumar. He also argued
Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. He returned to Hogan & Hartson in July 2004.
Office of the Solicitor General Garre returned to government in September 2005 as Principal Deputy Solicitor General. In this role, he represented the government in
Munaf v. Geren, 553 U.S. 674 (2008), arguing before the Supreme Court that U.S. federal courts lacked jurisdiction over two U.S. citizens being held by the military in
Iraq based on
Hirota v. MacArthur, a 1948 Supreme Court case that "rejected
habeas corpus petitions from
Japanese prisoners who had been convicted of
war crimes by an
international tribunal". He also won
Baze v. Rees (2008). He became Acting Solicitor General on June 19, 2008, when his predecessor
Paul Clement resigned. The same day, President
George W. Bush nominated him to be Solicitor General. According to his bio on the
Latham & Watkins website, he is "the only person to have held all of those positions". After he was sworn in as Solicitor General, he won all of his cases, including
Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council—for which he received the
Distinguished Public Service Award from the
U.S. Navy, its highest civilian honor, for his defense of the Navy's right to use
sonar during training exercises—
FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc., and
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which clarified that the gateway requirements announced in
Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly applied to all
civil litigation in the federal courts. which the firm took on
pro bono. A little over a week later, he successfully represented
Monsanto in
Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, overturning the
Ninth Circuit's injunction on
genetically engineered pesticide-resistant
alfalfa. In October 2011 he successfully argued
Maples v. Thomas. In October 2012, he unsuccessfully represented the
University of Texas at Austin in
Fisher v. University of Texas, a high-profile constitutional challenge to its
admissions policy in which the Supreme Court issued a 7–1 decision to vacate a lower court's decision which was in favour of the university. In November 2012, he successfully represented
Ball State University in
Vance v. Ball State University, a case about
employment discrimination in which the Supreme Court issued a 5–4 decision in favor of Ball State. == See also ==