Verrilli’s father was a lawyer with Irving Trust in New York, and his mother, Rose Marie,was the director of personnel of Richardson-Vicks U.S.A. Verrilli, graduated in 1975 from Wilton High School in Wilton, Connecticut. He received his Bachelor of Arts in history, cum laude, from Yale University (1979) and his JD from Columbia Law School (1983), where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review and a James Kent Scholar.

 

After graduating from law school, he clerked for federal appellate Judge J. Skelly Wright and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr.

 

His career as a lawyer began with the firm Ennis, Friedman & Bersoff, which merged into Jenner & Block in 1988. Verrilli spent 20 years with Jenner & Block, specializing in media, telecommunications and First Amendment law. His clients also included the House Democratic leadership, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Governor's Association, death row prisoners, asylum seekers, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, the National Association of Broadcasters, NextWave, General Dynamics, Morris Communications, MGM, MCI, Viacom (against Google) and the Cellular Telecom & Internet Association.

 

Verrilli argued 13 cases before the Supreme Court, including his most famous victory, in 2005, in MGM v. Grokster, in which he represented the music industry on the issue of file sharing.

 

His first political appointment came in 1994, when he served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton, assisting in the confirmation fight for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

 

In 2000, Verrilli played the part of moderator Bernard Shaw during Democrat Joe Liberman’s practice sessions for his vice-presidential debate with Republican Dick Cheney.

 

In February 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Verrilli to the post of Associate U.S. Deputy Attorney General within the Department of Justice. In that capacity, he helped formulate rules for Justice Department review of claims that lawsuits should be dismissed because they might expose state secrets.

 

The following year, he joined the White House as associate counsel to the president, handling domestic legal policy matters such as immigration, health care, financial regulation and the BP oil spill.

 

He has been an adjunct professor of constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law Center for 14 years. Verrilli also has been a member of the board of visitors of Columbia’s law school.

 

His nomination to become solicitor general won kudos from both Democratic and Republican holders of the office. Walter Dellinger, who served as acting solicitor general during the Clinton administration, told The New York Times that Verrilli was “unquestionably one of the best Supreme Court advocates of his time.” President George W. Bush’s solicitor general, Theodore Olson, said Verrilli was “intellectually sharp, invariably exceedingly well prepared, well liked by the people he works with and the people who are his subordinates.”

 

Verrilli has been married since 1988 to Gail Laster, a lawyer who has served at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and on the Democratic staff of the House Financial Services Committee. In 1992, while she served on the staff of Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, Laster was the first Congressional staffer to make contact with Anita Hill during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Verrilli and Laster have one daughter.

 

Profile (Wikipedia)

Don Verrilli (WhoRunsGov)

Obama Nominates a Deputy Counsel for Solicitor General (by Charlie Savage, New York Times)

Obama Nominates Wilton High Grad to Top Post (by Anthony Buzzeo, Daily Wilton)

 

Kagan was born on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on April 28, 1960. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was an elementary school teacher. Kagan graduated from Hunter College High School in 1977, and then attended Princeton, where she received her bachelor’s degree in history, summa cum laude, in 1981. She was awarded Princeton’s Daniel M. Sachs Graduating Fellowship, which allowed her to attend Worcester College, Oxford, receiving an M. Phil. in 1983.

 

She then attended Harvard Law School, where she was supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1986. Following law school, Kagan clerked for Judge Abner Mikva of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1986-1987) and for US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1987-1988), who was himself Solicitor General before President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the Supreme Court.

 

In 1989, Kagan joined the Washington, DC, law firm of Williams & Connolly as a litigator. She spent two years there before beginning her academic career at the University of Chicago Law School in 1991, teaching alongside Barack Obama. Kagan became a tenured professor of law in 1995.

 

That same year, she was selected by President Bill Clinton to serve as associate White House counsel. In 1996, she became Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and in 1997, Kagan was selected as deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council. In these positions she helped formulate and implement White House policy in areas ranging from education to crime to public health.

 

On June 17, 1999, President Clinton nominated Kagan to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Republicans, who controlled the Senate, balked at Kagan’s nomination and refused to convene a confirmation hearing.

 

She then left Washington and joined the faculty of Harvard Law School as a visiting professor in 1999. She was made a full professor in 2001. Kagan taught administrative law, constitutional law and civil procedure, and seminars on separation of powers and the First Amendment.

In 2001, she published the article, “Presidential Administration,” in the Harvard Law Review, which defended the Clinton administration’s assertion of the right to direct federal regulatory agencies without Congressional or court involvement. The article was honored as the year’s top scholarly article by the American Bar Association’s Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.

 

In 2003, controversial Harvard President Lawrence Summers (now Barack Obama’s director of the National Economic Counsel) appointed Kagan dean of Harvard Law School, making her the first woman ever to lead the law school. During her time as dean (which included the Charles Hamilton Houston professorship), she oversaw a capital campaign that eventually raised a school record $476 million and instituted a number of changes to bolster the school’s sagging reputation. She hired prestigious, and sometimes controversial, new faculty members, including Jack Goldsmith, who worked in the Bush White House and was rumored to have helped author the now infamous “torture memos.” Kagan also revamped the school’s core curriculum and instituted small, student-friendly changes, like offering free coffee in classroom buildings.  

 

Big plans highlight Elena Kagan's 2L (by Beth Potier, Harvard University Gazette)

At the HLS Helm (Harvard Magazine)