As Solicitor, he was largely responsible for developing the requirement of goals and timetables as an enforcement device for the affirmative action order.

[5] As Undersecretary, he repeatedly clashed with Charles "Chuck" Colson and tendered his resignation to compel the hiring of a black regional director in New York in 1972.

[7] Silberman was tasked with reviewing J. Edgar Hoover's secret files, which he described as "the single worst experience of my long governmental service.

[16] Silberman was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on September 11, 1985, to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to a new seat created by 98 Stat.

[20] Meanwhile, some criticized him for having an explosive temper while he was Deputy Attorney General,[21] and at the same time, others noted that "he expect[ed] people to pound the table and shout right back" and uniquely possessed "the interest, talent and capacity for administration.

"[22] It was also reported Silberman faced criticism over legal issues arising from his time at Crocker National Bank at which he had been executive vice-president between 1979 and 1983,[23] but that appears to have been pretextual given the FBI had cleared him of any wrongdoing and he had since been confirmed to the D.C.

[28] In 2015, Silberman wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, writing that the charge that "President Bush deceived the American people about the threat from Saddam" reminded him of "a similarly baseless accusation that helped the Nazis come to power in Germany.

"[29] In June 2020, Silberman circulated an email criticizing an amendment by Senator Elizabeth Warren to rename Confederate military bases.

An African American law clerk replied, pointing out the Confederate legacy of slavery and Silberman’s inconsistency, given his prior advocacy to rename FBI headquarters.

The amendment was ultimately included in the final version of the NDAA 2021[30][31][32] In October 2021, Silberman won the first annual Justice Clarence Thomas First Principles Award for his judicial service.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board called him "one of the all-time giants of the federal bench" and perhaps "the most influential judge never to have sat on the Supreme Court.

"[33] On March 17, 2022, several news outlets published an email that Silberman had sent to all Article III federal judges regarding a protest at Yale Law School.

[34] In the email, Silberman suggested that students who disrupted a Federalist Society event by shouting down a speaker should be barred from consideration for potential clerkships because they clearly do not respect free speech principles.

[35] The panel discussion, which focused on remedies for First Amendment violations, featured Monica Miller, the legal director of the American Humanist Association, and Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.

He explained that Bud McFarlane, then working for Senator Tower, wished him to see someone who had information on the hostage crisis—which, of course, was a matter of great political consequence to both campaigns.

It was his plan to contact someone with influence in Iran to propose that the hostages be released before the election to Governor Reagan, thereby embarrassing President Carter.

Ironically, it was I who unwittingly initiated the so-called "October Surprise" story, which grew into an utterly fantastic tale, even including George H. W. Bush's alleged secret trips to Paris to meet with Iranian emissaries.

Bill Safire heard something of the L'Enfant Plaza meeting when he was doing a rather critical story on McFarlane, who had been Reagan's National Security Advisor.

Too late, I learned that he had a personal animus: He despised Judge Gerhard Gesell [who presided over the North case in the lower court].