FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                          SG
WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 1997                           (202) 616-2777
                                               TDD (202) 514-2008

              DELLINGER TO LEAVE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

     WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger
announced today that he will return to Duke University Law School
September 1 as the Douglas Maggs Professor of Law.

     Dellinger also announced that he will conclude his tenure with
an August 11 oral argument before the Fourth Circuit Court of
Appeals, defending the Food & Drug Administration's proposed
regulation of nicotine and tobacco products.  

     "Walter is a great lawyer and a splendid public servant, and
I will miss him greatly,"
said Attorney General Janet Reno.  "He has made an invaluable
contribution to the the Deparmtment of Justice.  From the day he
arrived more than four years ago, he has provided me with hard-
headed analysis and wise advice.  I am proud to have been his
colleague, and his friend."

     Dellinger came to the Department of Justice in April of 1993
after serving as an advisor to the White House on constitutional
issues.  He was nominated by President Clinton to be Assistant
Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC),
and confirmed by the Senate in October of 1993.  Reno named him
acting Solicitor General in June of 1996.

     As acting Solicitor General for the 1996-97 Term, Dellinger
argued nine cases before the United States Supreme Court, the most
by any Solicitor General in more than twenty years.  His arguments
included cases dealing with physician assisted suicide, the line
item veto, the cable television act, the Brady Act, the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act and the constitutionality of providing
remedial services to parochial school children.

     During his three years as Assistant Attorney General he served
as the Department's principal legal advisor to the Attorney General
and the President.  As head of OLC, Dellinger issued opinions on a
wide variety of legal issues, including the President's authority
to deploy United States forces in Haiti and Bosnia, whether the
President may decline to enforce statutes he believes are
unconstitutional, whether the Uruguay Round GATT Agreements
required treaty ratification, whether courts may deny public access
to exhibits in child pornography prosecutions, the use of
statistically adjusted census figures, and students' rights to
engage in religious activity in public schools.  He also provided
extensive legal advice on the Administration's proposed loan
guarantees for Mexico, on asset sales related to the national debt
ceiling, and on issues arising out of the 1995-96 shutdowns of the
federal government. 

     "I will always be grateful to the President for giving me the
opportunity to serve in the two most interesting jobs a lawyer
could possibly have," said Dellinger.  "And I will always cherish
my friendship with Janet Reno, who has led this Department with
great integrity and with an insistence on doing the right thing
every time."   

     As a professor, Dellinger published articles on a wide variety
of constitutional issues, including constitutional history and the
process of constitutional amendment.  He spent the 1988-89 academic
year as a Fellow at the National Humanities Center.  He has
testified more than twenty-five times before Congress on a range of
constitutional and statutory issues, and has lectured at
universities in Germany, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Denmark and the
Netherlands.

     Dellinger is a graduate of the University of North Carolina
and Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law
Journal.  After teaching at the University of Mississippi Law
School, he became law clerk to Justice Hugo L. Black for the 1968-
69 Term of the United States Supreme Court.  He joined the faculty
at Duke Law School in 1969, and served as Associate and as Acting
Dean of the Law School from 1974 to 1978.

     He is married to Anne Maxwell Dellinger, Professor of Public
Law & Government at the University of North Carolina's Institute of
Government. They have two sons,  Andrew, a graduate student in
religion at Prescott College in Arizona and Hampton, Special
Counsel to the Attorney General of North Carolina.

     Dellinger can be reached at (202) 514-2201 or through the
Public Affairs Office.

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