Professor Ronald Rotunda Was One of a Kind

Over the last few years I got to know and worked with a true American patriot of the academic world. His name is Ronald Rotunda and he recently sadly passed away, after having gone into a hospital in California for a simple hernia operation.

Ron, as he was affectionately called, was at the time the Doy Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence of Chapman University School of Law in Orange County, California. Indeed, Ron was considered to be not only one of the premier legal experts on constitutional law, but also the premier expert on legal ethics and had written the leading treatise on this subject. His writings on legal ethics are used in nearly all American law schools and are updated periodically.

In his younger days, Ron served on the Senate Select Watergate Committee, ironically alongside Hillary Clinton and later as a distinguished member of the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Law and later George Mason University School of Law.

A graduate of ultra-leftist Harvard College and Harvard Law School, somehow by the grace of God Ron rebelled to having liberal teachings shoved down his throat, and took to conservative and libertarian doctrine and causes. Like yours truly, despite his education in the bowels of liberalism, Ron was not afraid to take on the left, with all of its hypocrisy and inconsistency. He understandably was a big supporter of our current President Donald Trump.

Ron saw the legal system and the nation for what it was, had become, and would be in the future. He regrettably recognized that the courts, its judges, and even the bar associations who regulate and oversee attorney ethics, had degenerated into a bastion of leftist partisan "witches and warlocks," dedicated to mostly opposing and attempting to harm those attorneys who swim upstream in the courts and elsewhere from their liberal “progressive” thought and advocacy.

With regard to many but not all state bars, Ron saw their bar disciplinary counsel persecuting attorneys of lesser means — whose legal scalps could be easily obtained to notch up their “win loss record” — and those advocates who are unafraid to take on conservative and libertarian causes. In practice if not effect, these by and large leftist state bar disciplinary counsel seemed to Ron to be frequently on a jihad to remove lawyers from the practice of law who they disagreed with ideologically. Nowhere did he see this as more true that with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel in Washington, D.C., the “Capital of Corruption” — which has been and continues to be ground zero of the war zone between left and right, particularly after the election of Donald Trump.

I do not know of any other academic in the nation who as much clarity of thought and courage as Ron Rotunda. He was my good friend and the day I was told of his death, hoping that it was not true, I called his cell phone hoping that it was more “fake news” by the leftist media, who by and large feared his wisdom. Answering his cell phone that day was his identical twin brother Don, who not only is the spitting image of Ron, and also has the same voice and inflection. I at first breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was Ron and that he was alive. But when Don identified himself and recounted how Ron had unexpectedly died, my heart sank.

The country and all rational legal thinkers had suffered a great loss and I for one will miss Ron deeply.

Ronald Rotunda was a truly great man, and a patriot! I pray and know that his soul will rest in peace.

Regrettably, there is no one presently in the academic world who I know of to carry his torch.

Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is known for his strong public interest advocacy in furtherance of ethics in government and individual freedoms and liberties. To read more of his reports, Go Here Now.