2026-05-18T09:00:51.540Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/18/politics/solicitor-general-john-sauer-supreme-court-conservative-majority
过去一年来，美国司法部副部长D.约翰·索尔在最高法院不断突破法律边界，他的庭审风格雷厉风行、充满对抗性，且处处透着MAGA腔调。
唐纳德·特朗普总统对此表示欢迎，而高等法院也并未加以抵制。
索尔强硬的立场和毫不妥协的态度，即便放在十年前可能早已让大法官们心生反感，但他却免遭了首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨此前针对奥巴马政府司法部副部长团队提出的那种羞辱性质询。
他的夸张言论无人加以制止。而且，当前任司法部副部长在改变政府立场时通常会受到的告诫，他也基本得以豁免。
最为重要的是，索尔与由6名保守派大法官组成的超多数派立场一致，全力推动扩大行政权力、全面改革投票权与选举法。
这一趋势将走向何方，将在未来几周内见分晓——大法官们预计将在7月1日前结束本届任期。目前，保守派多数已经在一系列针对特朗普议程的初步挑战中支持本届政府，允许特朗普着手解散联邦机构、削减国际援助并加速驱逐非法移民。
索尔最初作为特朗普的私人律师与其建立联系，并于2024年在最高法院为特朗普赢得了刑事起诉豁免权。更早之前，身为密苏里州司法部副部长的他，曾牵头发起一场孤注一掷的州级诉讼，抗议2020年总统选举结果，该选举结果最终将特朗普赶下台。
索尔摒弃了司法部副部长职位一贯的审慎中立态度，公开保留了自己的MAGA斗士风格。当政府在特朗普对华外商品关税争端中败诉——这是罕见且引人注目的失败——索尔站在总统身边，与特朗普一同谴责大法官们。特朗普在电视镜头前直言，大法官们“令他们的家族蒙羞”。
他在那场最高法院案件中的辩论，是本届任期内最具政治色彩的发言之一。
他在向大法官们开场陈述时传达了总统的观点：“4月2日，特朗普总统认定，我们不断扩大的贸易赤字已将我们推向经济和国家安全灾难的边缘。”索尔呼应总统的警告称，撤销关税“将使我们面临更具侵略性国家的无情贸易报复，将美国从强盛拖入衰败，带来毁灭性的经济和国家安全后果”。
担任美国司法部副部长的律师们无疑会反映任命他们的总统所属政党的政治立场。但这个被称为“第十位大法官”的职位的大多数任职者，都试图表现出不带感情色彩的中立态度，并更清晰地平衡联邦政府的整体利益。
曾在最高法院执业四十年的罗伊·恩格尔特曾于上世纪80年代在美国司法部副部长办公室担任律师，他表示索尔打破了这一模式。
“与总统及本届政府保持一致的索尔，比特朗普第一任期或此前任何共和党、民主党政府时期的司法部副部长都更具攻击性，”恩格尔特说道。
他补充道，索尔的策略只有在“契合最高法院自身的法理倾向”时才能奏效。
特朗普第一任期的司法部副部长是诺埃尔·弗朗西斯科，他更像是华盛顿共和党建制派的产物，当时的政府也比第二任期更为克制。弗朗西斯科当时面对的是5:4的保守派-自由派分野的法庭；而如今随着右翼席位增加，多数派立场正更快向右偏移。
诚然，索尔并未说服大法官们走向他们本无意涉足的领域。政府在全面关税争端中的失利，也暴露了特朗普政府辩护策略的局限性。
但最高法院近期对1965年《投票权法案》的削弱，彰显了司法部副部长能够如何引导法庭。在路易斯安那州诉卡莱伊斯案的判决中，尽管该判决源于罗伯茨领导下长达数十年的推动，但它援引了索尔团队精心设计的论点，在不推翻该法案的前提下破坏了《投票权法案》的关键条款。
持不同意见的大法官埃琳娜·卡根意识到了司法部副部长办公室的影响，她曾在某次发言中提及“司法部副部长，其关于如何颠覆（1986年投票权先例）的想法，很大程度上是照搬多数派的”。
效仿司法部副部长提交的“法庭之友”意见书风格，撰写多数派意见的大法官塞缪尔·阿利托淡化了新的选区重新划分歧视指控测试标准的影响，并表示“我们只需更新这一框架……”
在这场持续已久的路易斯安那州争议中，特朗普政府改变了司法部的立场，撤回了对该州六席国会选区中包含两个黑人选区的地图的支持。
特朗普在得知法院裁定该地图无效、这将有利于共和党后，回应道：“我爱这个结果。”
CNN首席最高法院分析师对重磅判决的反应
1:52 • 来源：CNN
CNN首席最高法院分析师对重磅判决的反应
1:52
现年51岁的索尔于2024年因帮助特朗普获得重大刑事起诉豁免权而全国知名。当时特朗普被指控在抗议2020年总统选举结果——该选举结果使乔·拜登顺利入主白宫——的过程中存在选举欺诈、共谋等多项罪名。
甚至在“特朗普诉美国案”这一标志性裁决之前，索尔就已展现出对特朗普的忠诚。他曾牵头带领多个州就2020年总统选举结果向最高法院提起诉讼。大法官们迅速驳回了这起名为“德克萨斯州诉宾夕法尼亚州”的案件。
2024年11月特朗普重新入主白宫后的一周，他宣布提名索尔担任美国司法部副部长，即政府在最高法院的首席律师。
在这一职位上，索尔不断援引“特朗普诉美国案”作为本届特朗普第二任期扩大行政权力的依据。罗伯茨在该案的法院意见中强调了总统的“最终且排他性”权威。
目前 pending 的“特朗普诉斯劳特案”可能会使法院批准特朗普在独立机构官员任期届满前将其解职。去年12月，当围绕前联邦贸易委员会丽贝卡·斯劳特的争议提交大法官们审理时，索尔在其辩护状中强调：“总统必须掌控所有行政权力的行使。”
索尔还借鉴了豁免权案中的表述，主张：“仅在两个任期之前，法院就重申，总统‘任命的美国行政官员的“最终且排他性”罢免权，不得受国会规制或法院审查’。这一最终且排他的罢免权，包括随意罢免由总统任命的多成员行政机构负责人的权力，例如联邦贸易委员会。”
在口头辩论中，他坚定主张扩大总统权力。他还巧妙地引用了罗伯茨的原话，敦促法院推翻1935年的“汉弗莱遗产执行人诉美国案”先例——该先例限制了总统的罢免权。
“汉弗莱遗产执行人案已沦为一具腐朽的躯壳，其大胆主张尤其危险，”索尔援引了罗伯茨在2024年一项推翻了40年司法机构对联邦机构尊重原则的判决中的原话。
斯坦福大学宪法法律中心的法律学者邓肯·霍西批评索尔推进了他所谓的“特朗普计划”。
“此前的司法部副部长，包括共和党政府时期的，都没有将这一职位完全置于总统的掌控之下，”霍西说道，并补充道索尔“受益于既同情特朗普个人，又认同保守派法律运动框架的法院”。
索尔为特朗普以及高等法院带来了一种独特的热忱与资历的结合体。
他曾获得享有盛誉的罗德奖学金、哈佛大学法学学位，并曾担任已故保守派偶像大法官安东宁·斯卡利亚的书记员——特朗普长期以来将斯卡利亚视为理想大法官的标杆。然而，与许多拥有此类精英履历的律师不同，索尔离开了华盛顿，回到了圣路易斯地区，先后担任美国助理检察官、转入私人执业，之后成为州司法部副部长。他还开始投身右翼优先事项，包括反对堕胎权和LGBTQ权利。
这种对文化战争的重视，使他非常适合特朗普，也适合此前已经推翻堕胎权并削弱跨性别者保护措施的最高法院。
特朗普、索尔与最高法院各自都在打破常规。与过去半个世纪里法庭以5:4的比例出现意识形态分裂的情况不同，当前的最高法院拥有由6名保守派大法官组成的超多数派。2020年底，特朗普任命艾米·康尼·巴雷特接替已故大法官露丝·巴德·金斯伯格，进一步巩固了右翼对法院的控制。
站在传统灰色晨礼服的讲台后，嗓音沙哑的索尔全程动作丰富。他动作利落有力地打着手势，肩膀上下起伏，全力推动总统的法律议程。
特朗普曾四次在法庭上观看索尔的辩护，前三次是作为其私人律师在下级法院代理案件。2023年11月，索尔在华盛顿特区巡回法院就特朗普选举腐败案的禁声令进行辩护；2024年1月，首次就特朗普寻求刑事起诉豁免权提起上诉；2024年9月，就纽约陪审团认定特朗普性侵E.让·卡罗尔并判赔500万美元的裁决提起上诉。
第四次则是上个月在最高法院，围绕总统试图终止非公民子女出生地公民权的行政令展开的辩论。
特朗普于2025年1月20日，即其重新就职的首日签署了该行政令，随即被下级法院法官叫停。该行政令与保障所有在美国出生或归化者享有出生地公民权的宪法第十四修正案，以及长期以来的最高法院先例相冲突。
索尔或许早已清楚此案胜算渺茫，特朗普本人也预测会败诉。本月早些时候，特朗普在Truth Social上发表了一篇冗长的帖子，写道：“根据我最近作为历史上首位出席最高法院庭审的总统所目睹的情况……他们会在出生地公民权问题上作出不利于我们的裁决，使美国成为世界上唯一一个实行这种不可持续、不安全且代价极高的‘灾难’的国家。”（事实上，包括加拿大和墨西哥在内的许多其他西半球国家都提供此类自动公民权。）
总统在该帖子中批评法院拒绝公开承认他的到场。特朗普是以诉讼当事人的身份坐在观众席上的。对于他眼中的怠慢，他写道：“法院甚至没有承认或认可这一点，出于对总统职位的尊重——这一点并未被假新闻媒体忽略！”
尽管总统屡屡抱怨最高法院，但保守派多数派往往与他立场一致，持续强化总统的整体行政权力。
而索尔从未像其他司法部副部长那样遭到多数派的猛烈抨击。自由派大法官偶尔会要求他放慢语速，罗伯茨也曾在1月的一场辩论中斥责他打断大法官的提问。
但首席大法官并不会像对待卡根（在奥巴马总统提名她进入最高法院前，她曾担任司法部副部长）及其继任者唐纳德·韦里利那样挑战索尔。例如，在涉及种族问题时，罗伯茨尤其毫不留情，曾向韦里利追问难以捉摸的投票统计数据，以暗示某些《投票权法案》保护措施已不再必要。
在2013年的一起案件中，罗伯茨曾问韦里利：“你知道哪个州的白人选民投票率与非裔选民投票率之比最糟糕吗？”当韦里利在为1965年《投票权法案》辩护时表示不清楚，罗伯茨说出了“马萨诸塞州”，并补充道：“你知道哪个州的非裔选民投票率实际超过白人选民吗？密西西比州。”
每当自由派大法官抨击索尔的论点时，保守派往往会为他辩护。在可能赋予总统更大自由解雇独立监管机构负责人的“特朗普诉斯劳特案”中，就出现了这样的情况。
“律师，”自由派资深大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔在质疑索尔推翻先例的论点时说道，“所以你是在主张，或者说你在论证，本院现任多数派大法官的推理，比奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯和路易斯·布兰代斯等知名法学家的观点更有说服力……你是在暗示，我们比……所有那些前辈大法官更清楚绝对行政权力的含义？”
片刻之后，特朗普任命的三名最高法院大法官之一、保守派大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺为他解围。
“针对索托马约尔大法官的问题，你可以援引威廉·霍华德·塔夫脱和斯卡利亚大法官的观点，对吧？这还不算太差。”
“我认为这些都是杰出的法学家，”索尔热情地回应道，“尤其是针对斯卡利亚大法官，他是最高法院历史上最伟大的法学家之一。”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmsVIRk3sBc
Trump’s MAGA Supreme Court lawyer breaks tradition, but the justices embrace it
2026-05-18T09:00:51.540Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/18/politics/solicitor-general-john-sauer-supreme-court-conservative-majority
Over the past year, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer has been pushing the boundaries of the law at the Supreme Court with a delivery that is quickfire, confrontational and imbued with MAGA attitude.
President Donald Trump has welcomed it — and the high court has not resisted it.
Sauer, whose hard-hitting positions and uncompromising manner might have turned off the justices of even a decade ago, has been spared the kind of humiliating questions that Chief Justice John Roberts sometimes aimed at the Obama administration solicitor general team.
His hyperbole goes unchecked. And he has largely escaped the admonishment that predecessors as solicitor general received when they changed the government’s position.
Most significantly, Sauer has locked arms with the 6-3 conservative supermajority in its drive to enhance executive power and overhaul voting rights and election law.
How far that goes will be seen in upcoming weeks as the justices are scheduled to finish the current term by July 1. The majority has already sided with the administration in a raft of preliminary challenges to the Trump agenda, allowing him to begin dismantling federal agencies, diminishing international aid and speeding deportations of undocumented migrants.
Sauer first connected with Trump as his personal lawyer, winning him immunity from criminal prosecution at the Supreme Court in 2024. Earlier, as Missouri solicitor general, he was at the vanguard of a last-ditch state lawsuit protesting the 2020 presidential election results that ousted Trump.
Sauer has defied the studied detachment of the solicitor general’s office and openly retained his MAGA-warrior sensibility. When the administration lost the dispute over Trump’s tariffs on foreign goods — a rare, conspicuous defeat — Sauer was at the president’s side as he denounced the justices. Standing before television cameras, Trump called justices “an embarrassment to their families.”
His arguments in that Supreme Court case were some of the most politically charged of the current session.
He conveyed the president’s message in his opening to the justices: “On April 2, President Trump determined that our exploding trade deficits had brought us to the brink of an economic and national security catastrophe.” Echoing the president, Sauer warned that reversing the tariffs “would expose us to ruthless trade retaliation by far more aggressive countries and drive America from strength to failure, with ruinous economic and national security consequences.”
Lawyers who hold the US solicitor general post have certainly reflected the political party of the president who appointed them. But most in the role known as “the 10th justice” have tried to present a dispassionate demeanor and more clearly balance the overall interests of the federal government.
Roy Englert, who has practiced before the Supreme Court for four decades, including in the 1980s as an attorney in the US solicitor general’s office, says Sauer has disrupted the model.
“The solicitor general, consistent with the president and the rest of administration, has been more aggressive than in the first Trump term or prior Republican or Democratic administrations,” Englert said.
His tactic will work, Englert added, only if it “aligns with the Supreme Court’s own jurisprudential preferences.”
The solicitor general in Trump’s first term was Noel Francisco, much more a product of the Washington Republican establishment, working with an administration more restrained than in the second term. Francisco also faced a 5-4 conservative-liberal bench; with today’s additional right-wing vote, the majority has been moving to the right faster.
Sauer, to be sure, is not persuading the justices to go anywhere they are not already bound. The administration’s loss in the dispute over his sweeping tariffs showed the limits of the Trump administration advocacy.
But the Supreme Court’s recent evisceration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act demonstrated where the the solicitor general could guide the court. The decision in Louisiana v. Callais flowed from a decades-long drive led by Roberts. Yet it drew on arguments that Sauer’s team had crafted to subvert a key Voting Rights Act section without overruling it.
Dissenting Justice Elena Kagan recognized the influence of the solicitor general’s office, referring at one point to “the Solicitor General, whose ideas about how to upend (a 1986 voting-rights precedent) the majority largely filches.”
In the vein of the solicitor general’s “friend-of-the-court” brief, Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the majority, minimized the consequences of the new test for alleging discrimination in redistricting and said, “We need only update the framework …”
The Trump administration had switched the Justice Department position in the long-running Louisiana controversy, withdrawing support for a state map with two Black-majority congressional districts among the total six.
Trump, after hearing that the court invalidated that map in a decision that would help Republicans, responded, “I love it.”
CNN’s chief supreme court analyst reacts to bombshell ruling
1:52 • Source: CNN
CNN’s chief supreme court analyst reacts to bombshell ruling
1:52
Sauer, 51, came to national prominence in 2024 as he won Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump had been accused of election fraud, conspiracy and other offences in connection with his protest of the election results that validly gave Joe Biden the White House in 2020.
Even before that landmark ruling in Trump v. United States, Sauer had showed his allegiance to Trump. Sauer helped lead a group of states backing a Supreme Court challenge to the outcome of the 2020 election. The justices quickly dismissed the case, Texas v. Pennsylvania.
The week after Trump regained the White House in November 2024, he announced he would nominate Sauer to be US solicitor general, the government’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court.
In that post, Sauer has continually cited the case of Trump v. United States as grounds for greater executive power in this second Trump term. That Roberts opinion for the court emphasized the president’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority.
One pending case, Trump v. Slaughter, could lead the court to greenlight Trump’s removal of independent agency officials before their terms are up. When the controversy centered on former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter came before the justices in December, Sauer stressed in his brief that, “The President must control all exercises of executive power.”
Adapting language from the immunity case, Sauer also asserted, “Just two Terms ago, the Court reiterated that the President’s ‘conclusive and preclusive’ ‘power to remove executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts.’ That conclusive and preclusive removal power includes the authority to remove at will the presidentially appointed heads of multimember administrative agencies, such as the FTC.”
During oral arguments, he was adamant regarding expansive presidential power. He also strategically lifted a line from Roberts as he urged the court to overturn a 1935 precedent, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, that had restricted the president’s removal authority.
“Humphrey’s Executor has become a decaying husk with bold and particularly dangerous pretensions,” Sauer asserted, using a Roberts phrase from a 2024 decision that overturned a 40-year principle of judicial deference to federal agencies.
Duncan Hosie, a legal scholar at the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, criticizes Sauer for furthering what Hosie calls “the Trump project.”
“Previous SGs, including in Republican administrations, did not subjugate the office entirely to the president,” Hosie said, adding that Sauer “benefits from a court that is both sympathetic to Trump as an individual and to the framework of the conservative legal movement.”
Sauer offers Trump, and the high court, a distinct blend of zeal and credential.
He obtained a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, Harvard law degree, and clerkship with the late conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Trump has long held up as the ideal. Unlike many lawyers with that elite experience, however, Sauer left Washington. He returned home to the St. Louis area, serving as an assistant US attorney, then turning to private practice, before becoming the state solicitor general. He also began working on right-wing priorities, including against abortion rights and LGBTQ rights.
The culture-wars emphasis made him a good fit for Trump and for a high court that has rolled back reproductive rights and protections for transgender people.
In their own ways, Trump, Sauer and the Supreme Court have defied the norm. Unlike much of the last half-century, when the bench was ideologically split 5-4, the current Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative supermajority. The right-wing control was cemented in late 2020 with Trump’s appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
At the lectern in the traditional gray morning coat, the gravelly voiced Sauer is all movement. He gestures briskly, his shoulders pump up and down, as he promotes the president’s legal agenda.
Trump has watched Sauer in a courtroom four times, the first three as he was representing him personally in lower courts. In November 2023, Sauer argued against a gag order in Trump’s election subversion case in the DC Circuit; then in January 2024, the first appeal for Trump in his effort to be immune from criminal prosecution; and in September 2024, an appeal of a New York jury’s finding that Trump had sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and its award to her of $5 million.
The fourth opportunity came last month at the Supreme Court, during the dispute over the president’s order attempting to end birthright citizenship for children born of people who lack citizenship.
Trump signed the order on January 20, 2025, his first day back in office, and it was swiftly blocked by lower court judges. It conflicts with the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and with long-standing Supreme Court precedent.
Sauer likely understood the long-shot nature of the case, and Trump himself has predicted defeat. In a rambling Truth Social post earlier this month, he wrote, “based on what I witnessed recently by being the first President in History to attend a Supreme Court session … they will be ruling against us on Birthright Citizenship, making us the only Country in the World that practices this unsustainable, unsafe, and incredibly costly DISASTER.” (In fact, many other countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Canada and Mexico, provide such automatic citizenship.)
The president in that post criticized the court for declining to publicly recognize him. Trump attended as a litigant in the spectator seats. Regarding what he perceived as a slight, he wrote that the “fact was not even recognized or acknowledged, out of respect for the position of President, by the Court – Something which did not go unnoticed by the Fake News Media!”
For all the president’s complaints about the court, the conservative majority is more often than not aligned with him, continuing to bolster the president’s overall executive power.
And Sauer has never faced the pummeling other SGs experienced at the hands of the majority. Liberal justices have occasionally asked him to slow down, and Roberts chastised him during a January argument for interrupting a justice mid-question.
But the chief justice does not challenge Sauer the way he confronted Kagan (when she was solicitor general before President Barack Obama named her to the court) or her successor Donald Verrilli. Roberts was particularly unyielding when the subject was race, for example quizzing Verrilli on elusive voting statistics to suggest certain Voting Rights Act protections were no longer needed.
In a 2013 case, Roberts asked Verrilli, “Do you know which state has the worst ratio of White voter turnout to African American voter turnout?” When Verrilli, defending the 1965 VRA, said he did not, Roberts said, “Massachusetts,” and added, “Do you know what has the best, where African American turnout actually exceeds White turnout? Mississippi.”
Often when liberals pounce on Sauer’s arguments, conservatives come to his defense. That happened in the Trump v. Slaughter case that could give the president a freer hand to fire the heads of independent regulatory agencies.
“Counsel,” senior liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor began as she challenged Sauer’s argument for the reversal of precedent, “So you’re thinking or you’re arguing that the reasoning of the more current justices on this Court have more purchase than the views of renowned jurists like (Oliver Wendell) Holmes and (Louis) Brandeis … you’re suggesting that we have a better view than … all of those previous justices about what absolute executive power means?”
A few beats later, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees, threw him a lifeline.
“In response to Justice Sotomayor’s question, you have (Chief Justice William Howard) Taft and Scalia, right? That’s not too shabby.”
“I think those are outstanding jurists,” Sauer rejoined enthusiastically, “and, with respect to Justice Scalia in particular, one of the greatest jurists in the history of the court.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmsVIRk3sBc
