Ronald Rotunda

Ronald D. Rotunda (February 14, 1945 – March 14, 2018) was an American legal scholar and professor of law at Chapman University School of Law. Rotunda's first area of primary expertise is United States Constitutional law, and is the author of an influential 6-volume legal treatise on Constitutional Law.[1] His other area of primary expertise is Legal Ethics, often called Professional Responsibility. He has also published an influential treatise on Legal Ethics, co-published by West-Thomson Reuters, ABA. He was also a senior fellow, in 2000, at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. In 1963, when Rotunda was 18 years old, he received a scholarship to attend Harvard University.^[1] Professor Rotunda later received a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Rotunda married Marcia Mainland, a law school classmate, in June 1969. They were married for 28 years and had two children. They were divorced in 1997. Marcia Rotunda was an attorney in the Office of University Counsel at the University of Illinois from 1986 to 2007.

In 1966, shortly after his conviction, Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, was one of Rotunda's students in a law course for prisoners.^[2] In an article about this experience Rotunda described DeSalvo as charming, helpful and well-groomed, in contrast to every other student at the prison.

Rotunda was Albert E. Jenner Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law.^[2] He was employed there for twenty-five years. He served as an advisor to Ken Starr during Starr's tenure as special prosecutor during the Clinton Administration. Previously, he had served on the investigative team during the Watergate scandal.

As an advisor to the Independent Counsel in 1998, Rotunda was asked for an opinion on "whether a sitting President is subject to indictment."

In a 56-page response released by the National Archives following a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Times, Rotunda concluded, "It is proper, constitutional, and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting President for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the President's official duties. In this country, no one, even President Clinton, is above the law."^[3]

He was later married to Kyndra Rotunda (and divorced in 2014). The Rotundas were on faculty at George Mason University School of Law until departing in 2008 for Chapman University.^[4]

Professor Rotunda died on March 14, 2018. A few weeks before his death, his final work, a one-volume abridged edition of Beveridge’s original early 20th century, 4 volume series on the life of John Marshall, was published.