Ben Miller-Gootnick is a Washington, D.C.-based public law attorney whose interest in how government works began well before law school. At Brown University, he paired public service with independent research and received a number of awards and fellowships. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He has since written about federal appointments and the House of Representatives’ authority to sue, and has worked on public law questions both inside and outside government.
Ben Miller-Gootnick at Brown University: Public Service and Research
At Brown, Ben Miller-Gootnick was involved with the Swearer Center, the university’s public-service center. He received the Lippitt Prize for Public Service and the Alfred H. Joslin Award, as well as the Harvey A. Baker Fellowship and the Royce Fellowship.
The Royce Fellowship funded independent, community-engaged research that took him to Macedonia (now North Macedonia) to study the Colorful Revolution, the 2016 protest movement named for the paint-filled balloons demonstrators threw at government buildings in Skopje. The protests began after the country’s president pardoned dozens of politicians under investigation in a wiretapping scandal, and they continued for months.
During his undergraduate years, he also completed an internship with the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, which handles the President’s dealings with Congress. The experience gave him an early look at the federal government from the inside; he would later work across each of its three branches.
Ben Miller-Gootnick at Harvard Law School: Law Review and Legal Scholarship
After Brown, Ben Miller-Gootnick attended Harvard Law School. He graduated magna cum laude and served as an Executive Editor of the Harvard Law Review, while also working as a research assistant for numerous faculty members. His research contributions were acknowledged in work that included the Final Report of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, which was created in 2021 to examine the debate over Supreme Court reform.
He also published his own scholarship, including “Boundaries of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act,” a note in the Harvard Journal on Legislation. The Act, passed in 1998, governs who may temporarily perform the duties of a vacant Senate-confirmed office. The note argued that it does not authorize acting appointments when the President creates the vacancy by removing the officeholder. That argument, built on the statute’s text, history, and structure, won both the ABA’s Gellhorn-Sargentich Law Student Essay Competition and the ACS Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law.
That recognition brought Ben Miller-Gootnick’s legal scholarship on federal appointments to a broader professional audience. He presented the note at the ABA’s 2019 annual meeting to more than 700 judges, academics, and government lawyers, and the work has been cited in legal and policy research. A separate article, “How the House Sues,” published in the University of Illinois Law Review, examined the constitutional basis for the House of Representatives’ delegation of litigation authority to its Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, which is made up of the Speaker and both parties’ floor leaders and whips. It also took up the justiciability questions that arise when that authority is challenged, including whether a court can hear the House’s case at all.
Ben Miller-Gootnick in Government and Private Practice
Ben Miller-Gootnick also held federal clerkships, became a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General, and later served as counsel on the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. In private practice, his work included appellate matters and congressional investigations. As a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General, he worked on federal appellate litigation and successfully briefed and argued a case before a federal court of appeals. That argument added practical courtroom experience to his academic record.
Across these roles, his work has involved executive appointments, congressional litigation authority, and appellate review. He has also written essays for Lawfare on presidential succession and federal appointments.
Pro Bono and Public Service
Public service has remained part of Ben Miller-Gootnick’s work since college, both in and out of government. His government roles followed his undergraduate involvement with the Swearer Center and his White House practicum, and he was named to the D.C. Courts’ 2024 Capital Pro Bono Honor Roll for completing more than 50 hours of qualifying pro bono service.
Several of the subjects of his later work first came up at Brown. As an undergraduate, he worked in the White House’s legislative affairs office, and the relationship between the executive branch and Congress has been a recurring subject of his legal career. It runs through his scholarship on acting officials who serve without Senate confirmation and on the House’s power to take its disputes to court. Even his Royce research in Macedonia dealt with a protest movement set off by a contested exercise of executive power.
About Ben Miller-Gootnick
Ben Miller-Gootnick is a Washington, D.C.-based public law attorney with experience across the federal judiciary, executive branch, Congress, and private practice. His background includes federal appellate clerkships, a Bristow Fellowship in the Office of the Solicitor General, service on the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, and appellate and congressional-investigations work in private practice. His scholarship has addressed federal appointments, presidential succession, and congressional litigation authority. Ben Miller-Gootnick’s professional background in public law also includes a record of public service and pro bono work.
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