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. ### 97-295