Paul who?

by James Oliphant

Who is Paul Clement, other than the man who has just inherited--temporarily at least--an agency in shambles and under a congressional microscope?

One thing is for certain: the new acting attorney general isn't where he is by accident. Clement, 41, has been solicitor general of the United States since March 2005, heading the office that argues on behalf of the government before the Supreme Court. He's also a conservative wunderkind, the kind of lawyer who could wind up on the high court himself someday.

With degrees from Georgetown, Harvard, and Cambridge, he served as a legal clerk for D.C. appeals court judge Laurence Silberman, a godfather of sorts to Republican lawyers, and later to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Clement joined Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis in 1994, just as one of the firm's luminaries, Kenneth Starr, was leaving to head up the Whitewater investigation as independent counsel.

He then moved on to the Hill, serving on the staff of then-Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.). When Ashcroft was named attorney general in 2001, Clement signed on as a senior deputy in the solicitor general's office, despite the fact that he had never argued a case before the Supreme Court. Clement assumed the top solicitor's post in 2005, after the departure of Theodore Olson (who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the permanent AG spot).

Clement has spent much of his government career defending the Bush administration's aggressive stand in terrorism cases, from the indefinite detention of enemy combatants to the lack of full due process rights for Guantanamo detainees. More recently this summer it fell upon Clement to oversee an internal investigation at the Department of Justice as to whether Alberto Gonzales perjured himself in congressional testimony relating to the U.S. attorney scandal. All of the senior department officials above him had either already resigned or been implicated in the scandal.

In a conference call with reporters Monday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed confidence in Clement's ability to run the department on an interim basis, saying he has "the confidence of the public." Specter, however, expressed hope that the administration would soon name a permanent replacement for Gonzales, who, unlike Clement, would have to face a Senate confirmation hearing.