Pronouns

I was reading something about the importance of the opinions written by S. Alito is his capacity as solicitor general, which excerpted a law journal article by David A. Strauss which contains the following sentence:

But the interesting and difficult questions about the Solicitor General's role do not directly concern his responsibilities to the Supreme Court ("his" because no woman has yet been appointed Solicitor General -- a situation that will surely change soon).

Surely the parenthetical remark fails to justify the choice of pronoun. For speaking of the solicitor general in this way is speaking of her as a kind or form--as a species, if you will, in the manner of nature documentaries (Prof. Thompson's favorite example of this way of talking). Surely there is nothing in the form of the solicitor general that should lead us to prefer the masculine pronoun; the contingent historical fact that all past soliciters general have been men is irrelevant. When Strauss writes, "The Solicitor General has authority to represent the United States before the Supreme Court," he does not mean that the person currently occupying the office has this power, though that is also true. So, too, although it is true that the current (and every past) occupant is male, it would be inappropriate (not to mention false) to write, "The Solicitor General is a man," in Strauss' context.