Penn Carey Law honors the legacy of Algernon Sydney Biddle Professor, Emeritus Curtis R. Reitz L’56, an esteemed Law School faculty member and University leader for over 50 years.
Curtis R. Reitz L’56, Algernon Sydney Biddle Professor, Emeritus passed away on April 2, 2025. He was 95.
An esteemed faculty member who taught at the Law School for 51 years and served as the University of Pennsylvania’s Provost and Vice President, Reitz was known for his unique wit, intelligence, and dedication to his colleagues and students.
Curtis R. Reitz L’56
“Curtis Reitz was a devoted and widely cherished member of Penn Carey Law who leaves behind an extraordinary legacy as an alumnus, teacher, and colleague,” said Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law Sophia Z. Lee. “He influenced the lives of countless students during over five decades in the classroom and helped guide the future of the University at a critical juncture. We are honored by his commitment to his alma mater and mourn this great loss to our community.”
As a teacher, Reitz devoted much of his career to three general areas of U.S. law: contracts and commercial transactions, professional responsibility and crimes, and sentencing and post-conviction remedies. In later years his interests centered on international commercial law.
“Curtis was a major force in my life at Penn,” said Morris Shuster Practice Professor of Law, Emeritus Douglas Frenkel W’68, L’72. “In 1969-1970, he was my 1L Contracts professor as my fellow students and I tried to master the course material and his dry sense of humor while the country was increasingly involved in a controversial war. Two decades later, I would join him and three other faculty to form our original Center on Professionalism, co-teaching a unique 1L course and creating legal ethics video case studies that became widely used around the country.”
“He was a wonderfully kind and supportive mentor-turned-colleague who I was also fortunate to be able to call a friend.”
Born on November 20, 1929, in Reading, Pennsylvania, Reitz attended Reading public schools before enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with an A.B. in History in 1951. While at Penn he was involved with the debate team and the radio station, eventually becoming Station Manager at WXPN.
Following graduation, he served in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps as a Second Lieutenant during the Korean War.
After serving for two years in Seoul, Korea, Reitz returned to Philadelphia as a law student, earning his LL.B. degree from Penn Carey Law in 1956 and graduating first in his class, summa cum laude. He served as the editor-in-chief of the Law Review from 1955 to 1956.
Following law school, Reitz spent one year as a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren in Washington, D.C., before returning to join Penn Carey Law’s faculty in 1957. He was appointed Associate Professor in 1960 and Professor of Law in 1963.
“Curtis Reitz was a brilliant legal scholar and committed teacher and mentor who was tremendously impactful in his half century at Penn Carey Law School,” said John H. Chestnut Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus Theodore W. Ruger. “In his many decades here, Curtis taught and inspired many thousands of our students and was an example and inspiration to many dozens of colleagues who joined the faculty and staff during his long career.”
“All of us who were privileged to know Curtis will remember fondly his intelligence, dry sense of humor, and compassion for those he worked with and taught. He will be missed even as his legacy lives on through those he influenced.”
Curtis R. Reitz, 1970
In January 1971, Reitz accepted the position of Vice President and Provost of the University of Pennsylvania. While he only served in the role for two years—citing a desire to focus on the law—Reitz and then University President Martin Meyerson are widely credited with improving the Penn undergraduate experience; establishing the College Houses, University Scholars, and freshman seminars.
Together, they also altered the financial structure of the University to end the running of annual deficits, requiring the deans to take on more financial responsibility for their schools. After resigning from his role as Vice President and Provost, Reitz served as Counselor to the President from 1973-1986.
Reitz remained a Professor of Law at Penn Carey Law until his retirement in 2008.
“Probably, I think the thing I enjoy most is talking to alumni who remember learning something in a class,” Reitz said in a 1999 interview as part of a Penn Carey Law Legal Oral History Project. “I think I probably have more than seven to eight thousand former students out there somewhere. When you’re in the teaching game, you have a kind of immortality in what your students do. And that’s nice.”
Reitz was a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third and Fourth Circuits, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Supreme and Superior Courts of Pennsylvania, and the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia. From 1965 to 1995, he served as a reporter for the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Standards Project.
Reitz was also a member of the Uniform State Laws Conference for multiple decades, where he represented the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. His work as a Commissioner for the Uniform Law Commission included participation in the revision of the Uniform Commercial Code and helping to transform the mission of the Conference to include taking an active role in the development of international private law in fields of Conference interests.
Additionally, he was a delegate to UNIDROIT, an independent intergovernmental organization that studies and promotes the unification of private law, particularly commercial law, across nations.
Reitz was a dedicated member of various Philadelphia community organizations, serving on the board of Glen Mills Schools, the International House of Philadelphia, and as a member of the Committee of Seventy, a civic watchdog agency in Philadelphia.
“[T]o the extent I have been introspective, one of the things that I like about my own mindset is that I am always thinking about the future, almost never about the past,” said Reitz in 1999 when asked about his greatest accomplishment. “What are we going to do next? What are we going to do about this? How are we going to solve that? And that kind of trying to solve problems, trying to do something to make the environment of the world a somewhat better place. Keep plugging away.”
Original source can be found here.