Michael Dreeben

Michael R. Dreeben served as a Deputy Solicitor General from 1995 to 2019. In that capacity, he oversaw the government’s appellate criminal litigation in the Supreme Court and throughout the United States. He has also twice served as Counselor to Special Counsels in the Department of Justice: first for Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and obstruction of justice, next for Special Counsel Jack Smith in his investigation and prosecution of efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and, separately, the destruction of classified documents. Earlier in his career he served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General from 1988 to 2015 and as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Maryland.

Dreeben has argued 109 cases in the Supreme Court. He has briefed hundreds more. These cases span a wide range of constitutional and criminal law issues, including cases on public corruption, private fraud, Fourth Amendment privacy, criminal sentencing, the Confrontation Clause, the right to counsel, the First Amendment, and the separation of powers. He has also argued cases in every regional federal court of appeals, including ten cases before en banc courts, and has argued appeals in the Montana Supreme Court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. He has received the Department of Justice’s John Marshall Award for the handling of appeals and has twice received the Department’s Distinguished Service Award. He has also received the Rex Lee Advocacy Award and the Tom Clark Award for Outstanding Government Lawyer.

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and earning a Master’s degree at the University of Chicago in history, Dreeben received his J.D. degree from the Duke University School of Law, where he served as an Article Editor on the Duke Law Journal and a member of the National Moot Court Team. He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge Jerre S. Williams. Dreeben has served as a Distinguished Visitor from Government at Georgetown University Law Center and as a visiting professor at Duke Law School, where he taught appellate advocacy and a seminar on constitutional litigation in the Supreme Court.