Beth Brinkmann

Brinkmann graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1980 with a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned her law degree from Yale Law School in 1985. She served as a law clerk to Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The following year, Brinkmann became the only female law clerk of Judge Kravitch's to clerk at the Supreme Court, an opportunity that had been denied Judge Kravitch in 1944 when she was told by the Justice with whom she interviewed that he did not want to break with precedent by hiring a female. Brinkmann served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun from 1986 to 1987. Brinkmann then worked for four years as an associate with the small San Francisco litigation firm of Turner & Brorby, after which she served as an assistant federal public defender from 1991 through 1993 in Washington, DC.

Brinkmann became Assistant to the Solicitor General of the U.S. in December 1993. She argued her first case before the Supreme Court on March 23, 1994. Brinkmann was the tenth woman hired as an Assistant to the Solicitor General, with five more women hired during her eight years in that office. She is one of 726 women who have argued before the Supreme Court, from the first in 1880 through 2016.

After leaving the Solicitor General's office, Brinkmann joined Morrison & Foerster in early 2002. As a partner at Morrison & Foerster and the chair of the firm's Appellate Practice Group, Brinkmann continued to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. "Every time you go up there, it is amazing, and an honor and privilege being there. You also feel very patriotic—at least I do," Brinkmann told the National Journal in 2002. In a November 20, 2007 article in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Brinkmann told the paper that she had argued 22 cases before the Supreme Court in her career. Eighteen of those times were as a staff lawyer in the Solicitor General's office, Brinkmann told ABA Journal in an article that ran in the magazine's March 2005 issue.

On April 3, 2009, Brinkmann announced that she had been tapped to join the United States Department of Justice as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General heading up the Appellate staff in the DOJ's Civil Division. After Obama left office, Brinkmann joined the law firm of Covington & Burling.

In the March 12, 2008, issue of The New Republic, writer Jeffrey Rosen floated Brinkmann's name as a future federal appeals-court judge or Supreme Court justice, likening her to Chief Justice John G. Roberts by suggesting her as a possible "Democratic female John Roberts". Rosen also characterized Brinkmann as "moderate, pragmatic and pro-business".