Bush Lawyer in Florida Fight Is Picked for Justice Post

WASHINGTON —  Two months ago, Theodore B. Olson cemented his reputation as a superstar lawyer for the Republicans when he won an emergency appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush vs. Gore, the case that effectively put George W. Bush in the White House.

Now Olson will get the chance to go before the high court full time, as President Bush on Wednesday nominated him and Atlanta lawyer Lawrence Thompson--a former federal prosecutor with equally solid Republican credentials--to top posts at the U.S. Justice Department.

If confirmed by the Senate, Thompson will be the deputy attorney general--the No. 2 spot under Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft at the 125,000-employee Justice Department--and Olson will serve as solicitor general, arguing the U.S. government’s cases before the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Bush is expected to announce as early as today that he will nominate Washington lawyer Charles A. James to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division, a key post with oversight of the government’s ongoing lawsuit against Microsoft Corp., an administration official said.

Both Thompson and Olson are former Justice Department lawyers in Republican administrations who have gone on to represent high-profile clients in private practice. Ashcroft hailed both men Wednesday as “outstanding individuals whose records of public service . . . are exemplary.”

Although Democrats are withholding judgment on both appointments, many liberal activists who so vigorously fought to defeat Ashcroft’s nomination say they see no serious opposition developing against either Thompson or Olson, despite their conservative reputations.

Indeed, Bush administration officials are hoping that the nominations of Thompson and James, both of whom are black, will win favor among minority groups who were offended by Ashcroft’s nomination and his views on racial issues.

But this may not be an easy sell.

Thompson is closely aligned with conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a longtime friend and a onetime colleague in Missouri who has come under fire from civil rights activists because of his conservative legal positions. Moreover, Thompson does not support racial quotas and has clashed with Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell over affirmative action.

“Over the years, Larry has not been known as a champion of civil rights or civil liberties,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a longtime civil rights leader who has known Thompson for about 20 years.

“Just because you have a black face and black skin doesn’t mean you represent a diversity of ideas. It’s an insult to our intelligence to think that this is going to make us happy with the Ashcroft nomination,” Lewis said.

If tradition holds, Thompson, 55, will likely assume much of the responsibility for the day-to-day management of the Justice Department as Ashcroft seeks to enact new initiatives against gun crime, drugs and a range of other law enforcement problems.

Thompson, a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, is a partner at Atlanta’s most prestigious law firm, King & Spaulding. He has defended numerous high-profile corporate clients, including Coca-Cola Co.

“He’s just a very, very well-respected lawyer in Atlanta,” said Seth Kirschenbaum, president-elect of the Atlanta Bar Assn., who has worked both for and against Thompson. “He’s a low-key, levelheaded, moderate kind of person . . . . I think he’ll really help Ashcroft with his presence.”

Beyond his white-collar defense work, Thompson also has significant experience as a prosecutor. He served as the U.S. attorney for the Atlanta-based district in the mid-1980s, and he did two stints as an independent counsel in public corruption cases, securing a guilty plea from former Interior Secretary James G. Watt in 1996 for misleading a grand jury. Former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno also strongly considered appointing him as a special counsel in 1999 to investigate alleged FBI abuses during the Branch Davidian standoff near Waco, Texas.

Thompson could not be reached for comment on his nomination.

Olson said he was “deeply honored” at being selected by Bush to join the Justice Department’s upper echelon.

The solicitor general is the Justice Department’s most high-profile litigator, responsible for developing the government’s positions on cases in the appellate pipeline and personally arguing many of the biggest ones himself.

Olson, 60, a graduate of Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, is a Washington-based partner at the blue-chip Los Angeles law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He had argued frequently before the Supreme Court even before the historic December showdown with Democratic candidate Al Gore over the Florida election results.

He has taken a sharp conservative line on a wide range of legal issues, losing an effort to keep the doors of an all-male military school closed to women and successfully fighting a Hawaii voting policy that favored native Hawaiians.

But he has done little high-profile work on what will likely prove the most closely watched appellate issue under Ashcroft’s Justice Department: abortion rights.

Ashcroft, a rigorous opponent of abortion, pledged during his confirmation that he would respect the “settled law” guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion. And one official familiar with the solicitor general’s operation said the administration does not expect Olson to enter the job with any predetermined agenda on abortion.

The Supreme Court is not expected to decide any major abortion cases in the current term.

But Gloria Feldt, head of Planned Parenthood’s national arm, said that, down the road, “what Olson can do is to make critically important decisions about what cases the U.S. government will argue before the federal bench and how vigorously. That’s a real concern.”

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Lichtblau reported from Washington and Gettleman from Atlanta. Senior researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta also contributed to this story.