Reuters: Walter Dellinger, Supreme Court Advocate and Legal Scholar, Dies at 80

O’Melveny partner and former acting US Solicitor General Walter Dellinger has died at the age of 80. Reuters described Dellinger as a “fixture of Washington and academic legal circles.” He argued nine US Supreme Court cases as Solicitor General and also served as assistant attorney general and head of the Office of Legal Counsel under the Clinton administration. At O’Melveny, Dellinger weighed in on two major gay rights cases before the US Supreme Court: Lawrence v. Texas and Hollingsworth v. Perry. In Lawrence, he asserted that the Texas law criminalizing private same-sex activity had no “legitimate and rational basis.” And in Hollingsworth, he argued that supporters of California’s gay marriage ban had “no standing in court to defend the ban’s constitutionality.” O’Melveny chair Brad Butwin said that Dellinger was a mentor to “many of America’s great jurists” and praised his commitment to equality and impact on the law and legal profession. 

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