Greg Abbott: Putting Legal Accomplishments Through the Political Filter

Rarely can one make the jump from lawyering into lawmaking without saying things that are exaggerated, misleading, and generally annoying to people like me who like to focus on the law.  Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is no exception.

Abbott is running for governor of Texas with the slogan of "I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and then I go home."  Sounds like he'll be popular.  This article , while positive in tone, reveals an array of credentials that turn out to be underwhelming upon closer examination.

Take the article's claim that "Abbott has secured either a definitive win or a largely favorable outcome in nine cases."  As examples, the article mentions a 2010 lawsuit against the Department of Education arising from an amendment to a spending bill.  The lawsuit was dropped when the Congress repealed the amendment -- making it tough for me to see how Abbot "secured" the outcome.  It looks like the same may be true of Abbott's lawsuit against the Obama Administration's moratorium on offshore drilling -- a suit that the article says was dismissed when the moratorium was dropped.

Or take Abbott's valiant defense of his citizens' Second Amendment rights.

"When our Second Amendment rights were threatened, I led a team of states to the defend firearm freedom all the way to the United States Supreme Court and we won," Abbott has said.

What does he mean?

Abbott's office announced in March 2010 the attorney general had filed a brief "on behalf of 38 state attorneys general" and attended oral arguments in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, concerning a ban on handguns in the city. The high court eventually ruled the ban in violation of the Second Amendment, incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to states as well as the federal government.

What does this mean?  Abbott filed an amicus brief with the court on behalf of the states, joining a chorus of 32 other amici.  The briefs that were actually argued before the Court were submitted by the parties to the case.  Abbott's "attending" oral argument apparently means that Abbott sat in the room while the case was argued by Alan Gura, Paul Clement, and James Feldman.

This is not to say that filing an amicus brief in a case is not an achievement.  As somebody who will be in Eugene Volokh's Amicus Brief Clinic this coming semester, I should be the last person to downplay the value of the added perspective and variety of arguments these briefs can bring to a case.

Of course, if I write an amicus brief in favor of a party that wins, I am not going to claim that I took the case to court and won.  After all, a statement like that could be viewed as me implying that I have the legal know-how and accomplishments of advocates who are far more talented and knowledgeable than me.