During the oral arguments last year in the U.S. Supreme Court case that sought to invalidate the Democratic health care law, Mike Lee watched from a familiar vantage point. The first-term senator from Utah has been witnessing high court arguments from inside the chamber since he was 10 years old. To him, the place was less an intimidating fortress on the Hill than a neighborhood clubhouse.
His father, Rex Lee, was the legendary solicitor general in the Reagan administration who argued before the court some 60 times in his career. While other fathers and sons talked sports at the dinner table, Mike and Rex Lee discussed issues of constitutional law and federalism. “I remember asking about Roe v. Wade,” Lee recalls in an interview in his Senate office, where he has named a conference room after Rex. “Why was that a federal issue? Why is that not an issue for the states?”
