The Office of the Solicitor General of the United States is responsible for appearing on behalf of the U.S. government in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. government is involved in a substantial number of cases that come before the Court. The Office's staff attorneys participate in the preparation of the petitions, briefs, and other documents filed with the Court in cases involving the government. The Office also sometimes submits amicus curiae briefs in cases not directly involving the federal government.
The Office's Briefs webpage contains merit briefs (including amicus briefs) filed by the Office since 1982 as well as documents filed by the Office at the petition stage since July 1997. For the most part, documents on this website are organized by Court term, based on when they were filed (e.g., a brief filed in May 2005 would be listed as a document from the 2004 term). For both briefs and petitions filed with the Court since July 1997, you can search by filing type ("Type of Filing By Term") or by subject ("Subject/Client"). The screenshot below shows the links for “Search Subject/Client” and “Type of Filing by Term” located near the top of the webpage.
After you make your selection(s), the names of the cases that meet your search criteria will be listed on the screen. If you click on the name of a case, you will pull up the document filed by the Solicitor General in that case. Keep in mind that there may be more than one link for a particular case name if the Solicitor General filed multiple documents in that case. If you have a very long list of cases, you may want to use the "Find on this page" feature on your internet browser to search on the page for a word or string of words from your case name.
