I'm representing the United States. And I'm representing the United States, and my office is representing the United States day after day in front of the court. And I think it's the right thing to do, to carry that out with some dignity and some respect for the process and respect for the institution. And so that led me to just, you know, move the dial a little bit in the direction of calmness.

When we're not a party, we sometimes file as amicus, as friend of the court, 25, 30 times a term, sometimes more. And in each of those cases, we've got to decide what position the government's going to take. And that is the solicitor general's job to make that decision.

The fact that you have a policy of such consequence directly affecting millions of people and you have a legal question of great consequence about the scope of the president's authority to act in implementing the immigration laws in this way and you have a one-line decision from the court affirming by an equally-divided court, it's an inevitable consequence of where we are.

I'm arguing for progressive positions on behalf of a progressive administration in front of a court who, before Justice [Antonin] Scalia's death, had a conservative majority that was quite conservative, frankly.

Quite often there's a great deal of disagreement within the executive branch about what we should do. Some cases are pretty straightforward, but a lot of them aren't.

It's the spring of 2012, that the [Barak] Obama administration would be embracing the argument that the Affordable Care Act was a tax, and that was going to, itself, be a political albatross.

I do think it's true that a huge amount of the oversight that the White House engages in with respect to the Executive Branch is out of fear that somebody's going to do something crazy and drive the president off a cliff.