During his career at WCL, Robert Vaughn has been Scholar-in-Residence with the law faculty of King’s College of the University of London, a visiting academic with the faculty of law at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, a visiting professor at the University of San Diego School of Law and a visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University School of Law in Kyoto, Japan. He has also served as a faculty member in summer programs in Santiago, Chile and Istanbul, Turkey. At WCL, he has received nine awards for outstanding teaching and five awards for scholarship. In 1983 he was selected as American University’s Teacher/Scholar of the Year, the university’s highest faculty award. During his visit at the University of San Diego School of Law, the student body there elected him Professor of the Year.

He has published on a variety of topics regarding public information law, public employment law, consumer law, and whistleblower protection. He is the author of a book on federal open government laws in the United States, the editor of a book on freedom of information, the editor of a book on transparency, and the author of several articles addressing public information law. He has written several books on public employment law, including ones on civil service reform, principles of civil service law, conflict of interest regulation in the federal government, and the United States Merit Systems Protection Board. His public employment law articles address topics, such as, the right to disobey illegal orders, ethics in government, the Hatch Act, the role of public employment laws in the transition to democracy, and British regulation of public service ethics. He is the author of a book and related articles on consumer protection laws in South America. He is the author of a book examining the effectiveness of whistleblower laws and the editor of an anthology of articles regarding whistleblowing law. His articles on whistleblower protection address important statutes, such as the whistleblower provision of the Civil Service Reform Act, the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, state whistleblower laws, and a model law to implement the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption. He is also the author of a book on civil procedure and articles on judicial reform, on the future of the federal courts, and on the relationship between judicial transparency and administrative transparency.

Among his consulting positions have been ones with the Treasury and Civil Service Committee of the House of Commons, the World Bank, and the Office of Legal Cooperation of the Organization of American States. He has testified several times before Congress on civil service reform, the federal Freedom of Information Act, and whistleblower protection. He was the plaintiff in the landmark case, Vaughn v. Rosen, that established important procedural requirements for litigation under the federal Freedom of Information Act.