Ted Olson, who died of a stroke Wednesday morning at the age of 84, was a great man.
Most of the obituaries that have been published since his passing describe him as a conservative lawyer—“a legal luminary of the right,” said The Washington Post. And it’s true that he argued Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court, winning the case for George W. Bush; that he worked in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Bush, as assistant attorney general and solicitor general, respectively; that he was a longtime supporter of the conservative Federalist Society; and that he won the famous Citizens United case, which essentially removed limits on campaign spending.
It’s also true that he was, without question, the finest Supreme Court practitioner of his generation, arguing before the court 65 times, and winning far more often than he lost. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to name a lawyer in recent times with a career that came close to matching his.
But when I think back on Ted Olson’s life—when I think about what made him great—it’s not the Supreme Court victories or the other career achievements I find myself focusing on. Rather, it was his integrity.
That integrity informed his commitment to the American project, and above all else, his deep devotion to the Constitution.
In a speech he gave in November 2001—the inaugural Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Federalist Society, named for his exceptional wife who had been on the plane that was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11—he put it this way: