Washington, D.C. (November 13, 2023) — The Gray Center applauds the appointment today of its visiting fellow, Professor Aaron Nielson, to serve as Solicitor General for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. AG Paxton announced the appointment this afternoon. This semester, Prof. Nielson is serving as Visiting Fellow for the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State in addition to his ongoing position as Professor of Law at the Brigham Young University School of Law.
“Aaron has long been one of the nation’s leading scholars of administrative and constitutional law. Texas could not have a better solicitor general, especially in an era when the administrative state is at the forefront of state litigation,” said Gray Center Co-Executive Director Adam White. “And Aaron has been a great friend to the Gray Center from the very start — authoring papers, speaking at our conferences, and commenting thoughtfully on others’ work. He truly is the best kind of colleague. We are grateful to him, and happy for him as he embarks on the next chapter of his career.”
“As Solicitor General for the State of Texas, Aaron will be on the forefront of defending state efforts against litigation challenges and will serve as Texas’s principal representative in litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Scalia Law Professor and Gray Center Co-Director Jenn Mascott. “In this capacity Aaron will be responsible for defending the State in cases involving cutting-edge issues related to both state regulatory authority and the preemptive effect of federal activity that in recent years has vastly expanded to intrude on traditional areas of state authority,” Mascott added. “Aaron’s scholarship is incisive and witty, prompting jurists such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to characterize his Harvard Law Review Forum essay ‘Confessions of an Anti-Administrativist’ as ‘brilliant’ in public remarks in 2017.”
Professor Nielson’s areas of expertise include administrative law, federal courts, civil procedure and antitrust law, and he is of counsel at Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Professor Nielson recently served as Council Member of the American Bar Association’s Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, and he is a longtime Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, recently chairing its Administration and Management Committee.
In 2020, Mr. Nielson was appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court to brief and argue Collins v. Yellen, a separation-of-powers case about the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He also regularly represents clients in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His publications have appeared in many of the nation’s top journals, including the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal. Professor Nielson began his legal career as law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samual A. Alito, Jr., Judge Janice Rogers Brown formerly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.