Edwin Kneedler

Edwin S. Kneedler (born January 4, 1946) is an American lawyer who was appointed to serve as acting United States solicitor general by President George W. Bush on the day of President Obama's inauguration, January 20, 2009. He served until March 19, 2009, with bracketing appointment as deputy United States solicitor general, a position he has held since 1993. At his retirement from this position in April 2025, Kneedler had argued the position of the United States government in 160 cases before its Supreme Court, more than any other modern advocate. and the family included an older brother, Lane, who went on to serve as a faculty member at the University of Virginia Law School. He attended and graduated from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he earned a B.A. in economics in 1967.

After graduating from Lehigh, Kneedler served as a VISTA volunteer in Oregon. His pursuit of law as a career has been described as "somewhat accidental", as his academic path evolved from engineering, through mathematics, to economics, with application to law school at the suggestion of Lane, his older brother and a law school faculty member—after Edwin "saw the ways attorneys were able to improve the lives of migrant workers". He was admitted to the bar of the state of Oregon in 1975, and joined the Office of Legal Counsel in the United States Department of Justice in October of that year.

In 1979, Kneedler joined the Office of the United States Solicitor General, the unit of the federal government, under the U.S. Department of Justice, that argues for the federal government in its cases before the United States Supreme Court. On April 27, 2022, Kneedler argued the U.S. position for Victor Manuel Castro-Huerta in Oklahoma v. Victor Manuel Castro-Huerta, which was his 150th case before the Supreme Court. Kneedler was first inductee to North Penn High School’s ‘Lifetime Achievement Hall of Fame’ in October 2021.

Early in 2025, Kneedler was named one of the year's recipients of a Thomas Jefferson Foundation and University of Virginia School of Law medal, their Medal in Law, which he received on April 11, 2025, in a ceremony with accompanying lecture at the law school.