Attorney General-designee Stephen Cox defended signing Alaska onto approximately 110 amicus briefs in eight months during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing Friday. Senators questioned whether these national cases distract from Alaska-specific priorities like domestic violence prosecution.

Cox told the committee that Alaska has joined multi-state amicus briefs for decades. The state was asked to join well over 1,000 briefs in the last 20 years and joined more than 500 in the last seven years. But his pace of 13 to 14 briefs per month represents more than double the 5.9 monthly rate under previous administrations. The Alaska Attorney General's office stopped providing public links to amicus briefs Cox signs, citing resource constraints. The change has raised transparency concerns as the volume of briefs increased.

Former Attorney General Bruce Botelho testified in opposition to Cox's confirmation. He called Cox a chief cultural warrior rather than chief legal officer. Botelho cited Cox's decision to relitigate the Katie John subsistence case and his participation in approximately 110 cases of what Botelho described as ideological litigation with no Alaska-specific necessity.

Those briefs included opposing birthright citizenship, challenging DEI programs, and supporting forced arbitration in nursing homes. Botelho singled out Cox's position on birthright citizenship as carrying profound and harmful implications for Alaskans in the military, on work visas, and in mixed status families.

Cox acknowledged dedicating one attorney position primarily to reviewing multi-state amicus briefs. That attorney spends roughly a third of their time on the work. He said the review is narrow because Alaska is not asked to edit or rewrite briefs drafted by other state attorneys general.

"The way that we sort of think about those issues is that each of these briefs presents a legal issue that will ultimately be litigated, whether it's in Alaska or whether it's in other courts of appeal or all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and ultimately will govern Alaskans, because that's how these sort of court decisions play out," Cox said.

Among the briefs Cox signed were an amicus brief in Watson v. Republican National Committee seeking clarity on election day rules and consideration of Alaska's unique geography and transportation challenges. Another was a West Virginia-led brief in September 2024 opposing lawsuits against energy producers for activities dating back to World War II, joined by Alaska, Iowa, Georgia, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

Senator Loki Tobin pressed Cox on resource allocation. She noted he had not mentioned missing and murdered Indigenous women in his opening remarks despite discussing his work with then-Attorney General on the issue. Cox initially listed Anchorage quality-of-life crime as the first challenge he mentioned, before domestic violence and sexual assault.