R. Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz serves as the Solicitor General of Texas. Appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in January 2003, he is the chief appellate lawyer for the State of Texas. Ted is the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas and, when appointed, was the youngest Solicitor General in the United States.

Ted has authored over seventy U.S. Supreme Court briefs and presented twenty-eight oral arguments, including seven in the U.S. Supreme Court. His representation of the State of Texas includes:

  • successfully defending the constitutionality of the Texas Ten Commandments monument before the Fifth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court;
  • authoring a U.S. Supreme Court brief on behalf of all fifty States and successfully defending the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance;
  • serving as lead counsel for the State and successfully defending the multiple litigation challenges to the 2003 Texas congressional redistricting plan in district courts and before the U.S. Supreme Court;
  • serving as lead counsel for the State and successfully defending the multiple litigation challenges to the 2003 Texas congressional redistricting plan in district courts and before the U.S. Supreme Court;
  • successfully defending the constitutionality of the Texas Sexually Violent Predator Civil Commitment law before the Texas Supreme Court;
  • successfully defending in the D.C. Circuit the individual right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment;
  • arguing the school finance case before the Texas Supreme Court and winning a unanimous reversal of the trial court’s ruling that the system violates the Education Clauses of Texas Constitution; and
  • successfully representing Texas before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case resisting efforts by the International Court of Justice to order reconsideration of U.S. death penalty jurisprudence.

For four consecutive years, he has won the Best Brief Award by the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), for best U.S. Supreme Court brief in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. As a litigator, his lifetime record in decided cases that he has argued is 20 wins and 4 losses.

In addition, since 2004 he has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches U.S. Supreme Court Litigation.

Prior to his current position, Ted served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning for the Federal Trade Commission, as Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as Department of Justice Coordinator for the Bush Transition Team. In November and December 2000, he helped assemble the Bush legal team, devise legal strategy, and draft pleadings in the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts during the Florida presidential recount.

From June 1999 to November 2000, Ted served as Domestic Policy Advisor to President George W. Bush on the Bush-Cheney campaign in Austin, Texas. In that capacity, he advised President Bush on a wide range of policy matters, with primary responsibility for all legal policy, including Civil Justice, Criminal Justice, Constitutional Law & Civil Rights, Immigration, Campaign Finance Reform, Political Process, and Government Reform.

Ted currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the Texas Review of Law & Politics, as a Director and former Vice President of the Texas Lyceum, and as the Chairman of the Board of Advisors for the Hispanic Alliance for Progress. He previously served as Chairman of the School Choice and Education Reform Committee for the Federalist Society. He has appeared on over thirty national television programs, including the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, NBC News, Good Morning America, Fox News, CNN, and CNBC’s Capital Report. He has given the Keynote Address at the 2005 Latino Law and Public Policy Conference at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, the opening debate address at the 1999 ACLU National Convention, and the Commencement Addresses at the University of St. Thomas, the University of Texas Government Department, and the Political Science Department of the University of California at Berkeley.

Ted has been named by Newsweek magazine as one of 20 young Hispanic Americans on the rise, named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators under 45 in America, named by Texas Lawyer as an Impact Player of the Year for 2006, honored by Harvard Law School as a Traphagen Distinguished Alumnus, and twice named by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in America.

He is a regular contributor to National Review Online , and is the author of The Rise of Opportunity Conservatism, a book chapter in Thank You, President Bush, published in 2004. Ted met his wife Heidi on the 2000 Bush campaign, and they are Pioneers for the 2004 campaign, and founding members of the Texas Mavericks.

Ted is the son of a Cuban immigrant, was raised in Texas, and attended Princeton University and the Harvard Law School. At Princeton, he was Chairman of the University Undergraduate Council, U.S. National Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year in college debate, and the number-one ranked collegiate speaker in North America. At Harvard, he was a Primary Editor of the Harvard Law Review, an Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and a founding Editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review. He graduated Harvard magna cum laude and was named a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. In 1995, he served as a law clerk to Judge J. Michael Luttig on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and in 1996 as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the Supreme Court of the United States. He is the only Hispanic in history to have clerked for the Chief Justice of the United States.