Helen Saulnier 
SCOTUS News
on Sep 6, 2022
at 5:48 pm
Jeffrey Minear talking to law college students in 2013. (Wake Forest University University of Regulation by way of Flickr)
Jeffrey Minear, who has served as the counselor to Main Justice John Roberts due to the fact 2006, will retire at the close of the thirty day period, the court docket declared on Tuesday.
Substantially like a main of workers, the counselor to the chief justice is a vaguely defined position with broad obligations, including encouraging the main oversee the Judicial Meeting of the United States and serving as the chief’s representative to other branches of governing administration, foreign courts, and viewing dignitaries. Minear also managed the court’s price range and labored to revitalize the Supreme Court Fellows method. Exterior the court docket, he served as Roberts’ agent as chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution.
Minear started his profession as a chemical engineer for the Union Carbide Company in Texas. Immediately after two several years, drawn to environmental legislation by his appreciate of camping and fishing, Minear remaining Texas for the University of Michigan Legislation College. He went on to clerk for Choose Monroe G. McKay of the United States Court docket of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in advance of using a job at the Section of Justice.
Just before coming to the court, Minear served for 21 yrs in the U.S. solicitor general’s office. He argued 56 cases in advance of the court docket, specializing in environmental regulation, Native American issues, and conditions less than the court’s initial jurisdiction.
Minear and Roberts very first achieved in the 1980s, often symbolizing opposing sides in the courtroom. In the late 1990s they joined up on a federal government anti-believe in suit in opposition to Microsoft.
In a 2017 speech, Roberts defined that the two actually got to know each other when, on opposite sides of what would turn into Alaska v. United States, they were sent on a simple fact-acquiring vacation on a fishery boat in Glacier Bay. “You really do get to know a person very well when you are in near quarters on a fisheries vessel for a 7 days,” Roberts reported. Roberts shortly remaining the scenario to join the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and then the Supreme Court docket. Just after a yr on the bench, he employed Minear to replace Sally Rider as counselor.
