Former U.S. Solicitor Common Ted Olson, who served two Republican presidents as one of many nation’s finest identified conservative attorneys and efficiently argued on behalf of same-sex marriage, died Wednesday.
He was 84.
The legislation agency Gibson Dunn, the place Olson practiced since 1965, introduced his dying on its web site. No reason behind dying was given.
Olson was on the middle of a few of the greatest instances of latest a long time, together with a win on behalf of George W. Bush within the 2000 Florida presidential election recount dispute that went earlier than the U.S. Supreme Courtroom.
“Even in a city filled with attorneys, Ted’s profession as a litigator was significantly prolific,” mentioned Mitch McConnell, the longtime Senate Republican chief.
“Extra importantly, I depend myself amongst so many in Washington who knew Ted as a great and first rate man.”
Bush made Olson his solicitor basic, a put up the lawyer held from 2001 to 2004.
Olson had beforehand served within the Justice Division as an assistant legal professional basic throughout President Ronald Reagan’s first time period within the early Nineteen Eighties.
Throughout his profession, Olson argued 65 instances earlier than the excessive courtroom, in keeping with Gibson Dunn.
These included the Residents United v. Federal Election Fee, a 2010 case that eradicated many limits on political giving, and a profitable problem to the Trump administration’s choice to rescind the Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals program.
Considered one of Olson’s most distinguished instances put him at odds with many fellow conservatives.
After California adopted a ban on same-sex marriage in 2008, Olson joined forces with former adversary David Boies, who had represented Democrat Al Gore within the presidential election case, to symbolize California {couples} looking for the best to marry.
A federal choose in California dominated in 2010 that the state’s ban violated the U.S. Structure.
The U.S. Supreme Courtroom let that call stand in 2013.
“That is a very powerful factor I’ve ever carried out, as an legal professional or an individual,” Olson later mentioned in a documentary movie in regards to the marriage case.
He advised The Related Press in 2014 that the wedding case was essential as a result of it “entails tens of 1000’s of individuals in California, however actually thousands and thousands of individuals all through america and past that to the world.”
His choice to affix the case added a distinguished conservative voice to the quickly shifting views on same-sex marriage throughout the nation.
Boies remembered Olson as a large in authorized circles who “left the legislation, our nation, and every of us higher than he discovered us. Few persons are a hero to those who know them properly. Ted was a hero to those that knew him finest.”
Olson’s private life additionally intersected tragically with the nation’s historical past when his third spouse, well-known conservative authorized analyst Barbara Olson, died on Sept. 11, 2001.
She was a passenger on American Airways Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
In recent times, his different excessive profile purchasers have included quarterback Tom Brady in the course of the “Deflategate” scandal of 2016 and expertise firm Apple in a authorized battle with the FBI over unlocking the cellphone of a shooter who killed 14 folks in San Bernardino, California, in 2015.
The vary of his profession and his statute on the nationwide stage have been unmatched, mentioned Barbara Becker, managing companion of Gibson Dunn.
“Ted was a titan of the authorized career and one of the vital extraordinary and eloquent advocates of our time,” Becker mentioned in a press release.
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