Advancing an executive agenda: The Office of the Solicitor General and the development of the modern American presidency.

摘要

This dissertation explores the development of the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. It analyzes the changing institutional structure of the office during five historical eras. It argues that the Solicitor General can be an important institutional ally to the President in articulating an executive legal agenda and defending the executive's prerogative to call for and lead a process of constitutional change and reform. This work compares the structure, workload, and activities of the office across time and analyzes its changing organizational identity and how its organization affects its institutional standing.; Research on the Solicitor General's office often proceeds tangentially from work on judicial processes or historical biography. Such work limits our ability to view the Solicitor General as an important ingredient in the development of an explicitly modern executive office and a necessary institutional ally for the president to achieve legal and constitutional change. Whereas most work on this office begins with the New Deal, this dissertation examines how the OSG has been used across time to advance an executive conception of the rule of law.; After developing a framework to study the Office of the Solicitor General as a unique legal organization in the executive branch, this dissertation explores the relationship of the presidency to the development and interpretation of the law. Subsequent chapters analyze this institution and its changing organizational identity during the late nineteenth century, the Progressive era, the New Deal, the post-New Deal and civil rights era, and the conservative era of the 1980s. What emerges is an understanding of the office as an important element in the process of political regime change and construction in the United States.