 Former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement urged Mercer Law School students to seek areas in the legal profession that allow them “to make a difference in professional life.” Clement spoke March 6 during Law Day at Mercer’s Walter F. George School of Law.“A single individual with a law degree has a tremendous ability to make a difference,” Clement said during his keynote luncheon address, referencing such icons as former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and current Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Prior to his luncheon speech, Clement lectured in a Constitutional Law course to a packed seminar room of mostly first-year Mercer law students. He told the group that arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, which Clement has done 49 times, is just the “tip of the iceberg” of what the solicitor general does.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Clement was nominated as solicitor general by President
George W. Bush on March 14, 2005. He served as the 43rd U.S. Solicitor General from June 2005
until June 2008. Prior to his confirmation as solicitor general, he served as acting solicitor general for nearly a year and as principal deputy solicitor general for over three years. He has argued 49 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including McConnell v. FEC, Tennessee v. Lane, Rumsfield v. Padilla, and the United States v. Booker.
Clement received a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a master’s degree in economics from Cambridge University. Following graduation from Harvard Law School, where he was the Supreme Court editor of the Harvard Law Review, Clement clerked for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. |
