At Jefferson Medal Talk, Deputy Solicitor General Encourages Public Service

While being honored for his 50 years advocating for the U.S. government, Deputy Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler ’74 turned the spotlight on his fellow federal employees and the role of the “citizen-lawyer.”

Kneedler, this year’s recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law, spoke to students and community members in Caplin Pavilion on Thursday, the day before he was scheduled to receive the award at the Rotunda.

Jefferson’s vision that a lawyer should aspire to be a public citizen, working for the public good, remains important today, Kneedler said. He said he sees those same qualities being carried out by his federal government colleagues, and praised their talents, compassion, understanding and dedication.

“I was surprised and incredibly moved to be asked to receive this award,” Kneedler said. “I choose to receive this award — for which I’m very grateful — to pass on the recognition of people in public service to all the people whom I have worked with over the years.”

Since joining the Office of the Solicitor General in 1979, Kneedler has argued over 150 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government — more than any other currently practicing attorney. He became deputy solicitor general in 1993 and served as acting solicitor general in early 2009. 

“It’s one serendipitous occasion after another to have gotten to where I am,” he said. “It’s been an example to me that our lives don’t unfold entirely in our control. So much is fortuitous — so much depends on the help of others. So much depends on what has gone before.

“And that is particularly true at this institution, the university founded by Thomas Jefferson, and the traditions carried on at this law school and carried on in the University, of a recognition of the importance of public service.”

Though cases culminate with oral argument, he said, they often begin with the attorneys from the Solicitor General’s Office working with federal agency employees to understand the subject matter so they can best present the government’s perspective in their brief, allowing Kneedler to meet and appreciate a wide variety of federal workers over the years. 

Kneedler had more gratitude to share — for his wife and daughters, who were patient with his frequent absences due to work; for his encouraging sister and brother (Lane Kneedler ’69, also a longtime UVA Law lecturer); and for the two lawyer colleagues who helped inspire him to go to law school while he was volunteering for a Vista program assisting migrant farm workers. That role, which he took on after graduating from Lehigh University and growing up in a “cloistered” environment in Pennsylvania, opened his eyes to another world.

“I highly recommend, during your [time in] law school — and maybe a lot of you have already done it — is placing yourself in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable place,” he said.

Kneedler said he was not a star student in college, but “when I came to law school, I was determined to redeem myself.”

A course in Indian law taught on the weekends by Henry “Harry” Sachse, who also worked in the Solicitor General’s Office, led to Kneedler’s career-long interest in the subject. In Kneedler’s first attorney job, at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, he drafted the bill that established reservations in Maine.

By the time Kneedler joined the Solicitor General’s Office, Sachse had left, and Kneedler stepped up to take on most Indian law cases before the Supreme Court in the subsequent decades, when the law rapidly evolved.

“This has been a remarkable 50 years in the development of Indian law and the development of Indian tribes — their growth in self-determination,” he said, also noting the boom in the number of Native American lawyers. “They are really carrying on the citizen-lawyer tradition in their own tribal situation.”

Kneedler reflected on other areas of law and cases that he worked on in his decades representing the government, including the growth of textualism in interpreting law and in resolving separation of powers cases, the dilemmas that ensued when a mass influx of Haitian immigrants ended up in Guantanamo during the Clinton presidency, and the infamous Elián González case, where he saw the conflict between preserving nuclear families versus promoting freedom brought to the fore. Five-year-old Elian’s mother had died while their boat sank on the way to Florida.

“For the exile community in Miami and elsewhere, the most important thing was to get your child to freedom,” he said. He heard protestors shouting outside courtrooms while he argued the government’s case for returning the boy to his father in Cuba. (González returned to the island and is now an engineer and politician there.)

Kneedler saw Chevron deference — the doctrine of courts deferring to agency experts — come and go, as the Supreme Court struck down the 1984 precedent in 2024. 

“But the most important development, I think, in administrative law, has been on the remedy side — nationwide injunctions, where a single plaintiff can get an injunction barring the enforcement of a law against anybody in the country,” Kneedler said. “And the same thing, courts will often vacate a rule across the board, even when there’s only a single plaintiff.”

Another recent trend, in which states sue to challenge federal programs because they financially impact the states, “tends to make cases appear political.”

Kneedler, who recently announced he was retiring, recalled feeling “lonely” in his first argument before the Supreme Court, because he had prepared by himself. Now mootings with colleagues are a regular part of preparation, and Kneedler said the approximately 20 lawyers in the Solicitor General’s Office feel the “emotional support” from each other during oral argument. 

“It really shows the importance of deep interactions on a professional level and personal level,” he said. “I think versions of that are replicated throughout the government … because all of us, in the end, work in a small office, a small component.”

Kneedler concluded by noting that you don’t have to be a federal employee, or even a government worker, to make a difference.

“This country has been renowned through its history for its private associations and nonprofits of like-minded people who want to do good and … make the world better and be repairers of the breach,” he said. “And so, I think lawyers have a special talent and a special ability and a special voice to help us all in that. So whatever your calling in the law is, I hope you will bear in mind the public good and the possibility of being a citizen-lawyer.”

Sponsored jointly by the University of Virginia and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit organization that owns and operates Monticello, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals are awarded each year to recognize the achievements of those who embrace endeavors in which Jefferson — author of the Declaration of Independence, third U.S. president and founder of the University of Virginia — excelled and held in high regard. The medals, which were also awarded for architecture and citizen leadership this year, are UVA’s highest external honors.