Walter Dellinger

Walter Dellinger, a renowned scholar of constitutional law and one of the top legal figures in the Clinton administration, in which he served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel and later as acting solicitor general, died on Wednesday February 16 2022 at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 80. His son Hampton, who oversees the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice, said the cause was complications of pulmonary fibrosis. Mr. Dellinger went to Washington in 1993 after teaching at the Duke University School of Law for more than two decades. When President Clinton picked him to be assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, his two home-state senators, Jesse Helms and Lauch Faircloth, both Republicans, tried to filibuster his nomination, Mr. Dellinger went on to play a key role in many of the toughest constitutional questions of the 1990s. Walter Estes Dellinger III was born on May 15, 1941, in Charlotte, N.C. His father, Walter Dellinger II, died when he was young, and he was raised by his mother, Grace (Lawning) Dellinger, who sold men’s clothing. He received a degree in political science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1963 and graduated from Yale Law School in 1966. Along with his son Hampton, he is survived by another son, Drew; his sisters, Barbara Dellinger and Pam Swinney; three grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. His wife, Anne (Maxwell) Dellinger, died in 2021.