Washington ? Two summers ago Paul D. Clement stood before a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., defending the Bush administration’s policy of indefinitely holding enemy combatants in this country as part of the government’s war on terrorism. The case involved U.S.-born Jose Padilla, and Clement, just one month into his new job as U.S. solicitor general, was arguing that people such as Padilla were trying to bring jihad home to this country – even if they are U.S. citizens and do not wear enemy uniforms.

Named Monday as acting U.S. attorney general to temporarily succeed Alberto R. Gonzales, Clement is likely to closely follow the principles of his predecessors – Gonzales and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Like them, he has vigorously embraced the White House’s mandate of waging war on terrorists in this country, even if it means diverging from longtime legal precepts of due process. He strongly believes in supporting case statutes and administration policy, whatever the consequences.

“Your job is to marshal the best argument for the defense of the statute or the policy that gets the job done,” he said in an interview with Legal Times in 2004. “That’s the way I approach all cases.”