Jonathan F. Mitchell


Jonathan F. Mitchell is an American attorney, academic, and government official. He has been nominated by President Donald Trump to become Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States. If he is confirmed to ACUS by the United States Senate, he will serve a five-year term. Mitchell is currently a visiting professor of law at Stanford Law School. From 2010–2015, he served as the Solicitor General of Texas.
Mitchell has argued four cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, argued dozens more in other courts, and authored more than one hundred briefs. Mitchell has also served on the faculties of the University of Texas School of Law, the George Mason University School of Law, and the University of Chicago Law School.

Early career

Mitchell received his Juris doctor with high honors from the University of Chicago Law School in 2001. While in law school, Mitchell was an articles editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and a member of Order of the Coif. After graduating from law school, Mitchell clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 2001 to 2002, and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court from 2002 to 2003. After clerking, Mitchell served as an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice.

Academia

Upon leaving the Department of Justice in 2006, Mitchell served on the faculties of the University of Chicago Law School and the George Mason University School of Law before his appointment as Solicitor General of Texas in 2010. After leaving the Texas Solicitor General’s office in 2015, Mitchell served on the faculties of the University of Texas School of Law and Stanford Law School. He was also a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2015 to 2016.
Mitchell has published scholarship on textualism, national-security law, criminal law and procedure, judicial review, judicial federalism, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the legality of stare decisis in constitutional adjudication. Mitchell’s academic writing has been cited by Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

Supreme Court practice

Mitchell has argued four times before the Supreme Court of the United States and authored the principal merits brief in six Supreme Court cases. His most recent argument before the high court was in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, No. 14-857, where he successfully argued that a class-action plaintiff may refuse a defendant’s offer of settlement, even when the settlement offer purports to provide complete relief for the plaintiff’s individual claims.
Mitchell also represented the State of Mississippi in a constitutional challenge to the State’s religious-freedom law, successfully defending the law before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then persuading the Supreme Court to deny certiorari and allow the disputed law to take effect.

Publications