WASHINGTON — On Oct. 29, about seven months before the recent revelations about secret government surveillance programs, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. made a commitment to the Supreme Court.

It was on the day Hurricane Sandy shut down the rest of Washington. The justices had made it to court through lashing rain, and they seemed to be paying particular attention when Mr. Verrilli, the Obama administration’s top appellate lawyer, argued that a challenge to a 2008 surveillance law should be dismissed.

He said, a little comically in retrospect, that the human rights groups, lawyers and reporters who sought to challenge the law had no particular reason to think that their communications were being collected. The plaintiffs could not show they had been harmed by the surveillance program, he said, so they lacked standing to sue. Their fears, he said, were the product of “a cascade of speculation.”

That was merely aggressive and effective advocacy.

Mr. Verrilli’s responses to the first several questions at the argument have turned out to be more problematic. He was asked whether a ruling in the government’s favor would mean that no court could ever assess the constitutionality of the program.