Robert Barnett

Robert B. Barnett (born August 26, 1946) is an American lawyer who is a partner at the law firm Williams & Connolly. Family, early life, and education Robert Bruce Barnett was born to a Jewish family on August 26, 1946, in Waukegan, Illinois, the son of Betty and Bernard Barnett. His father ran the Waukegan office of the Social Security Administration and had a popular call-in radio show that offered advice on federal retirement benefits. In 1964, he graduated from Waukegan High School where he served as senior class president. In 1968, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (where he was a member of Pi Lambda Phi fraternity), and in 1971 he graduated with a J.D. degree from the University of Chicago where he was comment editor for the University of Chicago Law Review. On April 10, 1972, he married Rita Braver whom he met while in college. They have a daughter, Meredith Jane Barnett (born 1978); Meredith married Dr. Daniel Ross Penn, April 6, 2008. Career After school, he clerked for John Minor Wisdom in New Orleans (where he married Rita Braver who accepted a job at CBS affiliate WWL-TV). In 1972, the couple moved to Washington, D.C. where he clerked for Supreme Court justice Byron White (replacing David E. Kendall) and his wife became a news-desk editor at the CBS News bureau. After his one-year clerkship, he accepted a position as aide to Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale who assigned him the task of soliciting support for legislation to curb filibusters. He became close friends with fellow Mondale aide Michael Berman.