Robert J. Delahunty

Robert Delahunty grew up in New York City. He was educated by the Jesuit order at Regis High School in Manhattan and graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University in 1968. He was awarded a Kellett Fellowship to study at Oxford University, from which he obtained a B.A. with First Class honors in Classics in 1970 and a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1972. He then studied or taught philosophy in England, Scotland, and Canada until 1980, holding research and teaching positions at Oriel College, Oxford University, and a tenured teaching position at the University of Durham in the north of England. During that time he wrote his book Spinoza, which was published in 1985. Delahunty returned to the United States in 1980 to study law at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1983. He began legal practice at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City, where he was an Associate in the Litigating Section from 1983 to 1986, working primarily on a major probate proceeding. He joined the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1986, and began working for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department in 1989. He was Special Assistant to the Solicitor of Labor in 1991/1992, a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America in 1999/2000, and Deputy General Counsel at the White House Office of Homeland Security in 2002/2003. He spent most of his legal career before joining the UST faculty, however, at the Office of Legal Counsel, where he was made Special Counsel and a member of the Senior Executive Service in 1992.