Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy[38] from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1992.[7][5] While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel and won the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship.[39] In 1992, he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year (with his debate partner, David Panton).[39] Cruz was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 World Universities Debating Championship, making him Princeton’s highest-ranked debater at the championship.[40][41] Princeton's debate team later named their annual novice championship after Cruz.[40]
Cruz's senior thesis on the separation of powers, titled "Clipping the Wings of Angels," draws its inspiration from a passage attributed to President James Madison: "If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Cruz argued that the drafters of the Constitution intended to protect the rights of their constituents, and the last two items in the Bill of Rights offered an explicit stop against an all-powerful state. Cruz wrote: "They simply do so from different directions. The Tenth stops new powers, and the Ninth fortifies all other rights, or non-powers."[35][42]
After graduating from Princeton, Cruz attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1995 with a Juris Doctor degree.[7][43] While at Harvard Law, Cruz was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.[5] Referring to Cruz's time as a student at Harvard Law, Professor Alan Dershowitz said, "Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant."[21][44] At Harvard Law, Cruz was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.[11]
Cruz currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the Texas Review of Law and Politics.[11][45] Clerkships
Cruz whilst serving as Solicitor General Cruz served as a law clerk to J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 1995[8][11] and William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States in 1996.[7] Cruz was the first Hispanic to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States.[46]
Private practice
After Cruz finished his clerkships, he took a position with Cooper, Carvin & Rosenthal, which is now known as Cooper & Kirk, LLC, from 1997 to 1998.[47] While with the firm, Cruz worked on matters relating to the National Rifle Association, and helped prepare testimony for the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.[48] Cruz also served as private counsel for Congressman John Boehner during Boehner's lawsuit against Congressman Jim McDermott for releasing a tape recording of a Boehner telephone conversation.[49]
Bush Administration
Cruz joined the George W. Bush presidential campaign in 1999 as a domestic policy adviser, advising then-Governor George W. Bush on a wide range of policy and legal matters, including civil justice, criminal justice, constitutional law, immigration, and government reform.[47]
Cruz assisted in assembling the Bush legal team, devise strategy, and draft pleadings for filing with the Supreme Court of Florida and U.S. Supreme Court, the specific case being Bush v. Gore, during the 2000 Florida presidential recounts, leading to two successful decisions for the Bush team.[11][50] Cruz recruited future Chief Justice John Roberts and noted attorney Mike Carvin to the Bush legal team.[48]
After President Bush took office, Cruz served as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department[7][50] and as the director of policy planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.[7][21][50]
Texas Solicitor General
Appointed to the office of Solicitor General of Texas by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott,[8][51] Cruz served in that position from 2003 to 2008.[29][11] The office had been established in 1999 to handle appeals involving the state, but Abbott hired Cruz with the idea that Cruz would take a "leadership role in the United States in articulating a vision of strict construction." As Solicitor General, Cruz would argue before the Supreme Court nine times, winning five cases and losing four.[48]
Cruz has authored 70 United States Supreme Court briefs and presented 43 oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.[8][21][32] Cruz's record of having argued before the Supreme Court nine times is more than any practicing lawyer in Texas or any current member of Congress.[52] Cruz has commented on his nine cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court: "We ended up year after year arguing some of the biggest cases in the country. There was a degree of serendipity in that, but there was also a concerted effort to seek out and lead conservative fights."[52]
In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz drafted the amicus brief signed by attorneys general of 31 states, which said that the D.C. handgun ban should be struck down as infringing upon the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.[32][53] Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.[32][54]
In addition to his success in Heller, Cruz has successfully defended the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds before the Fifth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, winning 5-4 in Van Orden v. Perry.[21][32][11]
In 2004, Cruz was involved in the high-profile case, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow,[21][11] in which Cruz wrote a U.S. Supreme Court brief on behalf of all 50 states.[55] The Supreme Court upheld the position of Cruz’s brief.
Cruz served as lead counsel for the state and successfully defended the multiple litigation challenges to the 2003 Texas congressional redistricting plan in state and federal district courts and before the U.S. Supreme Court, which was decided 5-4 in his favor in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry.[11][56]
Cruz also successfully defended, in Medellin v. Texas, the State of Texas against an attempt to re-open the cases of 51 Mexican nationals, all of whom were convicted of murder in the United States and were on death row.[8][21][32][11] With the support of the George W. Bush Administration, the petitioners argued that the United States had violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to notify the convicted nationals of their opportunity to receive legal aid from the Mexican consulate.[57][48] They based their case on a decision of the International Court of Justice in the Avena case which ruled that failing to allow access to the Mexican consulate, the US had breached its obligations under the Convention.[58] Texas won the case in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court held that ICJ decisions were not binding in domestic law and that the President had no power to enforce them.[57][48]
Cruz has been named by American Lawyer magazine as one of the 50 Best Litigators under 45 in America,[51][59] by The National Law Journal as one of the 50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America,[60][61] and by Texas Lawyer as one of the 25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century.[62][63]
Private practice
After leaving the Solicitor General position in 2008, he worked in a private law firm in Houston, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, often representing corporate clients, until he was sworn in a U.S. Senator from Texas in 2013.[35][11][64] At Morgan Lewis, he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.[64]
In 2009-2010, while working for Morgan Lewis, Cruz formed and then abandoned a bid for state attorney general when the incumbent Attorney General Greg Abbott, who hired Cruz as Solicitor General, decided to run for re-election.[20]
Source: wikipedia
Not for nothing, he sounds like a great candidate for the SCOTUS.
Meanwhile, Obama spent a semester as a law school lecturer, lecturing about introductory constitutional law to very bored law students.