In private practice, Ben Miller-Gootnick focused on appellate matters and congressional investigations. The Washington, D.C.-based public law attorney also worked on federal appeals as a law clerk and as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General, and on congressional matters as counsel on the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. The common thread across these experiences is public law and the operation of federal institutions, a theme that situates his private-practice work within a broader record involving courts, Congress, and executive branch legal practice.
Ben Miller-Gootnick and Appellate Work in Private Practice
Federal appellate practice appears in several parts of Ben Miller-Gootnick’s record. He clerked for federal judges at both the appellate and district court levels and served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General, where he worked on federal appellate litigation and successfully briefed and argued a case before a federal court of appeals. At a law firm, he did the same kind of appellate work for private clients in federal courts.
Previously, at Harvard Law School, Ben Miller-Gootnick graduated magna cum laude and served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also assisted numerous Harvard Law School faculty members with research, including work acknowledged in the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court’s Final Report.
Congressional Investigations and Legislative Experience
Congressional investigations were the other focus of his private sector practice. Ben Miller-Gootnick’s congressional investigations experience prepared him for his later service as counsel on the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. Before law school, as an undergraduate at Brown University, he also completed a practicum with the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, providing further relevant insight into the political process.
He has also written about Congress as a litigant itself. His article “How the House Sues,” published in the University of Illinois Law Review, examined the House of Representatives’ practice of delegating litigation authority to the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, including the constitutional basis for that delegation and the justiciability questions that arise when the authority is challenged. It concluded that the delegation is likely constitutional under Article I’s Rulemaking Clause. The article took second place in the Judge John R. Brown Award for Excellence in Legal Writing.
Scholarship That Parallels Practice
Some of Ben Miller-Gootnick’s other legal scholarship concerns how senior federal offices are filled when they become vacant. His Harvard Journal on Legislation note, “Boundaries of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act,” examined whether the Federal Vacancies Reform Act authorizes acting appointments when a vacancy results from presidential removal. In an analysis grounded in textual, historical, and structural reasoning, his note concluded that the Act does not, and that the Act reaches only vacancies arising from the officeholder’s own decisions or circumstances. That note won the ABA Gellhorn-Sargentich Law Student Essay Competition and the ACS Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law. It has also been cited in subsequent scholarship, including a Congressional Research Service report on the Vacancies Act and a report of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Ben Miller-Gootnick has also written Lawfare essays on presidential succession and federal appointments, one of which drew a published response in the Harvard National Security Law Journal. Together with “How the House Sues,” these pieces cover executive appointments, congressional authority, and the separation of powers.
Private Practice Within a Cross-Institutional Career
Ben Miller-Gootnick’s private-sector work focused on appellate matters and congressional investigations. It fell between two government jobs: a Bristow Fellowship at the Justice Department, and a counsel position with the House Judiciary Committee. That experience pulled together aspects of both appellate and congressional practice and provided private-sector preparation for his cross-institutional public-service career.
About Ben Miller-Gootnick
Ben Miller-Gootnick is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney whose work has covered public law, federal appellate litigation, congressional investigations, and government service. He studied at Brown University, where he served on the student advisory committee of Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Service and received the Lippitt Prize for Public Service, the Alfred H. Joslin Award, and the Royce and Harvey A. Baker Fellowships. At Harvard Law School, he graduated magna cum laude and served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review. The public-law background of Ben Miller-Gootnick also includes federal clerkships, legal scholarship, and private-practice work focused on appellate matters and congressional investigations.
