Walter Estes Dellinger III, a product of Yale Law School, currently heads the Appellate Practice of O’Melveny & Myers, the 19th largest law firm in the world. Apart from that, Walter Dellinger is also a law professor teaching at Duke University and director of the Supreme Court and Litigation Clinic at Harvard Law School.

After graduating from Yale Law School, Walter Dellinger served Justice Hugo L. Black of the United States Supreme Court as a law clerk from 1968-69.

During the Clinton administration, Walter Dellinger served as the 40th Solicitor General, from August 1996 to October 1997. He succeeded Drew S. Days III and was later replaced by Seth P. Waxman. After serving as Solicitor General, he went to Duke University where he became the Douglas B. Maggs Professor of Law.

As a Solicitor General, Walter Dellinger argued nine cases before the Supreme Court. The said cases included his arguments of suicide with the aid of a physician, the line-item veto, the cable television act, the Brady Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the constitutionality of remedial services for children going to parochial schools.

Prior to his term as Solicitor General, he was the President’s advisor on constitutional issues. In 1993, the President backed Walter Dellinger to be the Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel.

Among his famous arguments include:

Presented before the Supreme Court:

• Jackson v. Birmingham School District;
• Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington;
• Utah v. Evan;
• US Airways v. Barnett;

Presented before the Court of Appeals:

• Whiteside v. United States;
• Exxon v. Alabama and LCI v. Phillips and Bank of America v. Miller;
• Martha Stewart v. United States.

Prior to his stint with the United States government, Walter Dellinger already handled cases for several clients, among of which were Owens-Illinois, Inc., the State of Alaska, hospital associations, and members of Congress. His arguments for the latter include cases pertaining to issues of hospital rights, taxation of oil revenues, and other mass tort issues.

Walter Dellinger also supplies popular publications and weeklies with scholarly articles and college journals. His scholarly works were printed in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal and the Duke Law Journal. He also has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, the New Republic and the London Times.