William Consovoy Dies at 48; Took Conservative Cases to the Supreme Court

“I think he was one of the greatest lawyers of our generation,” Neal Katyal, an acting solicitor general for President Barack Obama, said in a phone interview. “In hot-button cases, lot of times passions overtake logic, and that was not the case with him. So in court it wasn’t cheap appeals to emotion or anything like that. It was just good legal argument.”

William Spencer Consovoy was born on Aug. 31, 1974, in Plainfield, N.J. He grew up in nearby Florham Park, where, like any self-respecting Garden State native, he developed a lifelong love for the Philadelphia Eagles and Bruce Springsteen.

He came from a family steeped in New Jersey politics. His paternal grandfather, George, served as mayor of Franklin Township, in the middle of the state, in the 1960s.

His father, Andrew, was the chairman of the state parole board, though he was forced to resign after being accused of trading favors with people involved in organized crime. He denied the accusation, and no charges were ever brought.

William’s mother, Linda Whalen, was a mental-health specialist. Both she and his father survive him, as do his stepfather, Bernie Whalen, and his sister, Amanda Consovoy. He married Masa Anisic in 2020. She died in 2021, also from cancer.

Mr. Consovoy graduated from Monmouth University in 1996 with a degree in political science, and from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in 2001. There, he became a devotee of Justice Thomas, captivated by his no-holds-barred originalism.

“For Justice Thomas, I believed, judging was not about slogans, labels or legal theories,” Mr. Consovoy said in a 2016 speech at George Mason. “It was about the search for truth.”