Raymond C. Fisher, LLB ’66, was a leader of the Los Angeles legal community, champion of police reform, veteran member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and mentor to many.

We knew Ray best as a judge. In his judging, he was not driven by ideology. The most important thing to him was “getting the right answer,” as he wrote in one opinion. But the right answer was not some abstraction, and the search for the answer was not just a matter of calling balls and strikes. He never forgot that his decisions had real-world consequences, or that legal principles, as he wrote, were designed to “serve human needs.” 

His judging drew heavily on his rich life experience. He treasured his clerkship—and friendship—with Bill Brennan, the
Warren Court’s most influential justice. Brennan was never far from his thoughts, and he considered his own work a part of that great justice’s legacy. Brennan’s influence shines through in Ray’s many decisions supporting freedom of the press, racial justice, a robust democracy, gay, lesbian, and transgender equality, and fair treatment of immigrants. As his friend and mentor Warren Christopher, JD ’49, put it, his opinions reflected “a lifelong commitment to fairness and freedom for all.”

Brennan also influenced Ray’s approach to his fellow judges. Like Brennan, Ray was a consensus builder, beloved and respected by other judges not only for his intelligence and hard work but also for his genuine collegiality. He was, in the words of Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Sidney R. Thomas, “a model of judicial temperament”—brilliant yet gracious, formal yet unfailingly warm with colleagues of all political backgrounds and with his law clerks.

In building a family of law clerks, Ray looked again to Brennan’s example. Like Brennan, Ray stayed close with his former clerks and worked to connect them to one another. He took enormous pride in their personal and professional accomplishments. He celebrated their marriages (several of which he officiated) and the births of their children. Every new “grandclerk” was welcomed with children’s books selected by Ray and Nancy, his wonderful wife of 59 years. Ray and Nancy had the clerks over for lunch every summer in Santa Barbara, and for dinner each winter in Sherman Oaks. Clerks often returned to visit the judge and his indefatigable judicial assistant, Katie Johnson, who was Ray’s partner in all he accomplished as a judge. We each count others from the clerk family among our closest friends.

Ray was instrumental in reforming the Los Angeles Police Department after the Rodney King scandal and the 1992 riots. He served as a lawyer for the Christopher Commission and, later, oversaw the L.A. Police Commission, where he presided over the administration of Police Chief Willie L. Williams and helped orchestrate Williams’ departure from office under the city’s new term limits for police chiefs. Veteran journalist Jim Newton said of Ray’s work, “Nothing did more to turn around this city, starting with its police department, than the implementation of those reforms.”

Later, under President Bill Clinton, Ray served as associate attorney general of the United States, where he worked closely with police departments around the country.

These experiences informed Ray’s judging, especially in difficult cases involving the police. Ray deeply understood both the essential role of the police in protecting the public and the need to guard against the sometimes tragic consequences of excessive force.

He was surrounded by educators throughout his life. His father was a professor of Russian history at UCLA, and Nancy taught English in the L.A. public schools for 25 years. He returned throughout his career to the issue of school desegregation, beginning with his work, during his clerkship with Judge J. Skelly Wright, a liberal legend, on a case ordering the desegregation of the District of Columbia’s public schools. In his opinions, he spoke personally and passionately about academic freedom, noting in one case that “teachers must be given leeway to challenge students to foster critical thinking skills and develop their analytical abilities,” free from “dogmatic restrictions that chill teachers from adopting the pedagogical methods they believe are most effective.”

Each August, Ray would give departing law clerks copies of the opinions they had worked on during the year, annotated with his handwritten notes. These were sometimes funny, sometimes profound, always generous and heartfelt. In one year involving a particularly large number of environmental cases, he wrote, of one opinion, “The environment thanks you!” and on another, “Another victory for nature.” An opinion in an excessive force case was “clear, convincing, controversial, but right!!” A decision upholding a death sentence was “principled, painful.” When he disagreed with us, he was gracious and complimentary: “A very hard case; thanks for your critical skepticism and careful wordsmithing,” he wrote in one such instance.

Ray had the benefit of many wonderful mentors in his life—Christopher, Brennan, Wright, and his law partner Bill Norris, JD ’54, among them. And he paid it forward. A natural mentor himself, he possessed a unique combination of rigor and warmth. His old-fashioned formality never obscured his genuine caring for his colleagues, for his friends and family, and for those his work affected. We adored him. SL