PERSON: Walter Dellinger (Deceased)

Walter Estes Dellinger III (May 15, 1941 – February 16, 2022) was an American attorney and legal scholar who served as the Douglas B. Maggs Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law. He also led the appellate practice at O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C., and Harvard Law School’s Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation Clinic. He served as Acting United States Solicitor General under the administration of President Bill Clinton, from 1996 to 1997.

In 1969, Dellinger became a professor at Duke University School of Law.

In 1993, he joined the Clinton Administration as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel. Because of his advocacy for liberal causes, his nomination was filibustered by the two conservative senators from his home state of North Carolina, Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth, but Dellinger was ultimately confirmed.

Dellinger served as the acting United States Solicitor General for the 1996–1997 Term of the Supreme Court. He argued nine cases and won five, including a case defending the president’s line-item veto and two cases defending laws that barred assisted suicide.

He also appeared as a commentator on This Week, the ABC News Sunday morning program hosted by George Stephanopoulos.

On March 18, 2008, he unsuccessfully represented the District of Columbia before the United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller. The District argued that its Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 should not be restricted by the Second Amendment. The ban was overturned by the Supreme Court.

In February 2008, Dellinger represented ExxonMobil in the Supreme Court in Exxon Shipping Co. V. Baker, which addressed whether certain punitive damages are available under federal maritime law. This case relates to the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989.

On March 5, 2010, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Dellinger defending Karl Thompson.

In 2010, North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue inducted Dellinger into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, calling him “North Carolina’s best friend, legally, that we’ve ever had.”

In early 2012, Dellinger represented the defendant in United States v. Antoine Jones, in which the US Supreme Court barred the government’s warrantless use of a GPS device on Jones’ Jeep Grand Cherokee as part of a drug trafficking investigation. Dellinger said the decision in the case was “a signal event in Fourth Amendment history”.

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