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Robert Zauzmer

Robert Zauzmer

Adjunct Professor of Law

Robert A. Zauzmer is a summa cum laude graduate of UCLA (1982) and Stanford Law School (1985). After a clerkship with Judge Arlin M. Adams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, he was in private practice until joining the United States Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia in March 1990. As an Assistant United States Attorney, he has prosecuted all manner of federal crimes, focusing on corruption and fraud matters, including the Philadelphia City Hall corruption case, in which the City Treasurer and numerous business executives were convicted in 2005 of corrupt conduct in local affairs, a case which led to a significant reform movement in city government; the prosecution of former State Senator Vincent J. Fumo, a powerful Pennsylvania politician who was convicted in 2009 of defrauding the State Senate and a charity he founded of millions of dollars, and of obstruction of justice; and the 2017 prosecution of R. Seth Williams, the Philadelphia District Attorney who pled guilty during trial to a bribery offense and admitted additional bribery and fraud offenses.

In addition, since 1998, Zauzmer has supervised all federal criminal appeals in the district, and appears frequently before the Third Circuit in that capacity. Zauzmer has presented all ten en banc arguments in which the office has been involved since 2000.

Zauzmer has held leadership positions in the Department of Justice, including serving from 2012 to 2014 as the national chair of the committee of appellate chiefs advising the Attorney General and other Department officials on appellate matters, and during the same time as an ex officio member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. From February 2016 through January 2017, Zauzmer served as the Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, to assist in completing President Obama’s initiative to extend executive clemency to nonviolent drug offenders serving sentences that were longer than would be imposed under later law and practices.

Zauzmer has twice received the Department of Justice’s John Marshall Award, its highest award for litigation activities. He was first recognized in 1992 for his assistance in a prosecution of drug organizations which took over and terrorized a Philadelphia neighborhood. He then received the award in 2008 for his participation on the team of Justice Department attorneys which oversaw the Department’s response to amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines for crack cocaine offenses, which required the resentencing of thousands of defendants; in that effort, and subsequent rounds of retroactive resentencing in 2011 and 2014, Zauzmer drafted extensive arguments which were used by federal prosecutors nationally to respond to the myriad legal issues which the amendments created.

Positions
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania - Assistant United States Attorney (1990-); Chief of Appeals (1998-)

Office of the Pardon Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice – Acting Pardon Attorney (2016-2017)

Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis, Philadelphia - Associate (1989-1990)

Tuttle & Taylor, Los Angeles - Associate (1986-1989)

Law Clerk to Judge Arlin M. Adams, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (1985-1986)