Even before Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Olson strode before the U.S. Supreme Court in March to argue that California’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, he’d already played a large role in shaping the political debate on the subject. A conservative legal icon who represented George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore and became Bush’s solicitor general, Olson was leading the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 four years before President Obama announced that his own views on the matter had "evolved" and his move gave fellow Republicans ground to follow suit. The court likely will decide the matter in June, along with a related challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act.
Olson has 60 Supreme Court arguments under his belt, but Gibson’s appellate team is hardly a one-man shop. Theodore Boutrous, Miguel Estrada, Thomas Hungar and their colleagues together have presented more than 40 arguments before the court, and 30 percent of Gibson’s petitions for certiorari between 2005 and 2012 found favor, by the firm’s count. By comparison, the court granted just 1 percent of all cert petitions last term.
