At the age of 84, renowned attorney Ted Olson, who argued a number of significant constitutional cases, passed ahead on Wednesday. Olson’s death was announced by his law company, Gibson Dunn, where he had worked since 1965. The cause of death was never shared.
Olson played a major role in considerable legal disputes. In the Supreme Court’s vote debate from 2000, he properly represented George W. Bush. He served as U. S. Solicitor General under President Bush from 2001 to 2004.
In one of Olson’s most significant situations, same-sex people were suing California for the right to marry. This circumstance went against the opinions of many of his own conservatives. During his closing argument, Olson stated:” It is the straight of people, not an indulgence to be dispensed by the condition. The right to marriage, to choose to marry, has never been tied to parenthood”. The case eventually led to the decriminalization of same-sex wedding nationwide.
Over the course of his profession, Olson had a significant impact on American law by arguing 65 situations before the Supreme Court.
” Yet in a city full of doctors, Ted’s career as a lawyer was especially prolific”, said Mitch McConnell, the longtime Senate Republican president. More important, I belong to the large number of people who knew Ted well and respected him in Washington.
Bush made Olson his counsel general, a blog the prosecutor held from 2001 to 2004. In the beginning of President Ronald Reagan’s second term, Olson had formerly served as an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department.
” They were n’t just little cases”, said Theodore Boutrous, a partner at the law firm who worked with Olson for 37 years. ” Many of them were large, hit caes that helped form our society”.
Those included the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a 2010 circumstance that eliminated some limitations on political giving, and a powerful obstacle to the Trump administration’s decision to revoke the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals system.
He was” the greatest lawyer I’ve ever worked with or seen in action,” according to Boutrous, who had a reputation for working with Olson so well that Gibson Dunn refers to them as” the two Teds.” He had a way of engaging and persuasive doctors who could not be found in the presence of ordinary people. They respected him thus much”.
One of Olson’s most notable instances put him at odds with some other conservatives. In order to symbolize Californian lovers seeking the right to marry, Olson and former attack David Boies joined forces to fight the state’s legal system after California banned same-sex unions in 2008.
In his closing arguments, Olson argued that same-sex couples were not legally discriminated against because history or fears of harming heterosexual unions.
A federal prosecutor in California ruled in 2010 that the government’s restrictions violated the U. S. Constitution. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that choice.
In a video about the relationship case, Olson after remarked,” This is the most important thing I’ve ever done, either as an attorney or a man.”
He claimed in 2014 that the marriage case was significant because “it involves tens of thousands of people in California, but really millions of people in the United States and to the rest of the world” ( ).
His decision to join the event gave the quickly changing views on same-sex unions a prominent liberal tone.
Boies referred to Olson as a “glorious figure” who “left the rule, our land, and each of us stronger than he found us.” Some people can be heroes if they are well-known. To those who had the best knowledge of Ted, he was a warrior.
Olson’s personal existence even intersected painfully with the government’s record when his second wife, well-known liberal legal scientist Barbara Olson, died on Sept. 11, 2001. On American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, she was a passenger.
In recent years, his other high profile clients have included quarterback Tom Brady during the” Deflategate” scandal of 2016 and technology company Apple in a legal battle with the FBI over unlocking the phone of a shooter who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in 2015.
Barbara Becker, Gibson Dunn’s managing partner, said that his career span and his statute on the national stage were unmatched.
According to Becker, Ted was a titan of the legal profession and one of the most extraordinary and eloquent advocates of his time.
