Ben Miller-Gootnick: From Undergraduate Research and Public Service to Federal Public Law
Ben Miller-Gootnick is a Washington, D.C.-based public law attorney whose work spans federal service, appellate litigation, congressional practice, and legal scholarship. He has worked in all three branches of the federal government and published scholarship and analysis on federal appointments, congressional litigation authority, and presidential succession. He has also successfully argued before a federal court of appeals, and previously served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review. As a law student, he won multiple national writing competitions for his note about the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. He graduated from Harvard Law School and Brown University.
Ben Miller-Gootnick Across Federal Institutions
Ben Miller-Gootnick has worked across each of the three branches of government. In the legislative branch, he served as counsel for the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary; in the executive branch, he worked as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General; and in the judiciary, he completed multiple federal judicial clerkships.
During his time in the Office of the Solicitor General, which represents the federal government before the Supreme Court, he worked on federal appellate litigation and briefed and argued a case before a federal court of appeals. In private practice, his work focused on appellate matters and congressional investigations. Ben Miller-Gootnick also principally analyzes Congress and the executive branch in his scholarship.
He has also completed significant pro bono service alongside his legal practice. In 2024, he was recognized on the D.C. Capital Pro Bono Honor Roll for completing more than 50 qualifying hours of pro bono work.
Ben Miller-Gootnick’s Undergraduate Research and Public Service
At Brown University, Ben Miller-Gootnick received the Lippitt Prize for Public Service, the Alfred H. Joslin Award, the Royce Fellowship, and the Harvey A. Baker Fellowship. The Royce Fellowship funded Ben Miller-Gootnick's Brown University research, an independent, community-engaged research project in Macedonia on the 2016 protest movement known as the Colorful Revolution.
At Harvard Law School, he 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 and scholarship, and his contributions were acknowledged in work that included the Final Report of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.
Ben Miller-Gootnick on Federal Appointments and Congress
Ben Miller-Gootnick's student note, "Boundaries of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act," examined whether the Federal Vacancies Reform Act authorizes the president to make acting appointments when a vacancy results from presidential removal. The paper analyzed the statute’s text, history, and structure, and won the ABA Gellhorn-Sargentich Law Student Essay Competition and the ACS Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law.
His article "How the House Sues" explored the House of Representatives' practice of delegating litigation authority to its Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, a five-member panel of House leaders. It addressed both the constitutional basis for that delegation and the justiciability questions that could arise if the authority were challenged. It has been cited in academic scholarship and took second place for the Judge John R. Brown Award for Excellence in Legal Writing.
He has also written for Lawfare on presidential succession and federal appointments. Collectively, his public law scholarship examines questions involving executive appointments, congressional practice, and the mechanics of federal institutions. His academic research, appellate practice, government service, and legal writing together form a coherent record across several areas of public law.
