Lawyer won admiration at Penn, Supreme Court

Ralph Spritzer, 93, emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a leading appellate lawyer who argued more than 60 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, died of leukemia Sunday, Jan. 16, at his home in Tempe, Ariz.

After a distinguished career in government service, Mr. Spritzer joined the Penn faculty in 1968. He taught courses in civil procedure and antitrust law, served as adviser to the Moot Court Competition, oversaw applications for judicial clerkships, and directed students in the Indigent Prisoner Litigation Program.

When he retired in 1986, his students wrote in a tribute that the most important thing he had shown them was "it is possible to be simultaneously a thoughtful and kind person and an effective lawyer and litigator."

"Ralph was a gifted teacher, a generous mentor to generations of law students, and a superb lawyer renowned for his elegant, quietly persuasive presentation style," Penn Law School dean Michael A. Fitts said.

After leaving Penn, Mr. Spritzer taught a course each semester at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he also coached moot court teams. He taught last semester and was preparing a course for the spring, his daughter Pam said.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Mr. Spritzer finished high school at 15. He had earned bachelor's and law degrees from Columbia University by age 23, even after taking time off for a thyroid operation.

During World War II, he served in the Army in the Judge Advocate General's Office.

After his discharge, he was an attorney in the Office of Alien Property and in the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, was general counsel to the Federal Power Commission, and for 12 years was an attorney in the Solicitor General's Office. He told his family that he was leaving government service in 1968 because he didn't want to serve in the Nixon administration.

Mr. Spritzer argued his first case before the Supreme Court in 1951. Among his most notable cases involved the early-1960s sit-ins by African American men who were refused service at lunch counters. The federal government sided with the protesters, and the sit-in convictions were reversed.

Paul Bender, dean emeritus at the O'Connor Law School and a former Penn colleague who worked with Mr. Spritzer at the Solicitor General's Office said: "Ralph was the best oral advocate I have ever heard or seen anywhere. He was more skilled than anyone else in the ability to persuade a court. He was so reasonable, so clear, not contentious, and the way he tells it to you is so easy to understand.

"There were no histrionics, just the calmest, clearest, most commonsense argument you will hear."

Clients sought out Mr. Spritzer to argue their appeals even after he became a professor. His last appearance before the Supreme Court was in 1980 when he represented physician Jeffrey MacDonald, the former Green Beret accused of killing his wife and two daughters in 1970. A divided U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had struck down MacDonald's 1979 conviction, saying he was denied a speedy trial. Mr. Spritzer argued that MacDonald was innocent and that prosecutors had violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial, but the Supreme Court upheld the conviction.

When Mr. Spritzer retired from Penn, Judge Oscar Davis of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit wrote, "No advocate can persuade in every case, but the final tribute, and it's a high one, I pay to Ralph is that, when he did not persuade, he always left the judges deeply troubled."

When Mr. Spritzer applied for the position at the O'Connor School of Law, he asked Supreme Court Justice William Brennan for a reference. Brennan obliged, describing Mr. Spritzer as "the finest advocate to argue before our court in my years on the bench."

Mr. Spritzer swam regularly for exercise and was a world-class bridge player. Though extremely cultured and well-read, he enjoyed playing the horses, Bender said, and was so good at figuring out odds that track regulars would ask him for advice.

His daughter recalled going to the track with her father when she was growing up and playing chess and cards with him. Later they played Scrabble and did the New York Times crossword puzzle together. Mr. Spritzer's wife of 58 years, Lorraine Nelson Spritzer, died in 2008. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Ron, and three granddaughters.

A life celebration is being planned for a later date in Arizona at the O'Connor School of Law.