John FitzRandolph; Dean Helped Whittier Law School Flourish

John A. FitzRandolph, who over a quarter-century as teacher and dean led drives for accreditation, relocation and growth of Whittier Law School, has died at 65.

FitzRandolph died Thursday in Laguna Hills of cancer, campus officials said.

“For many people,” said the law school’s interim dean, Frederick G. Slabach, “John was Whittier Law School.”

FitzRandolph joined the faculty in 1976, a year after the school was founded. Named dean in 1981, he took over the daunting task of acquiring American Bar Assn. accreditation, which can make or break a law school. Accreditation was granted in 1985.

As dean, FitzRandolph also gained membership for the campus in the Assn. of American Law Schools in 1987, and more recently secured funding for the school’s public Children’s Rights Clinic. Opened last fall, the clinic was dedicated the day FitzRandolph died.

But FitzRandolph’s most significant achievement, in addition to acquiring accreditation, occurred in 1996, when he moved the 690-student law school from Los Angeles’ Hancock Park area to its current home in Costa Mesa.

At that time, Whittier became Orange County’s first ABA-accredited law school.

“By moving to Orange County,” FitzRandolph told The Times in 1996, “we’re meeting a need for an ABA school there and solving our growth problems.”

The 15-acre site FitzRandolph chose offered three times the space of the 60,000-square-foot Hancock Park facility.

When the new campus was dedicated, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy tossed out legal jokes and addressed the crowd. He also taught a couple of constitutional law classes.

“I asked him if he’d be here and he said, ‘Would you like me to teach a class?’ ” said FitzRandolph, who three decades earlier had graded papers for then-professor Kennedy at McGeorge Law School in Sacramento. “And I gave it a nanosecond of thought and said ‘Yes.’ ”

FitzRandolph retired in June as dean, but had planned to resume teaching next fall after a year’s sabbatical.

Kennedy was not FitzRandolph’s only connection with officeholders. He had served as executive assistant to former U.S. Sen. John Tunney (D-Calif.) and as assistant to Bob Moretti, former speaker of the California Assembly.

FitzRandolph also served as chief consultant to the Democratic Caucus of the California Legislature and staff attorney for the California Constitution Revision Commission. Locally, he headed the Los Angeles County Intra-Governmental Relations Commission.

Educated at USC, FitzRandolph taught at McGeorge Law School before joining the Whittier faculty. As a legal educator, he was elected to the board of trustees of the ABA Accreditation Committee and headed the dean’s council of the California Committee of Bar Examiners.

FitzRandolph is survived by his wife, Susan; one daughter, Laura of Washington, D.C.; and two sons, Kenneth and Daniel of Southern California.

A memorial service is scheduled for 5 p.m. April 26 at Whittier Law School, 3333 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa. The family has requested that memorial donations be made to the John A. FitzRandolph Memorial Fund at Whittier Law School.