Earl Carlyle Dudley, Jr., 83, died August 31, 2024, at Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge in Charlottesville.
The son of Earl C. and Susie Hall Dudley, he was born January 8, 1941, in the Philippines, where his father worked for the U.S. Navy. Later that year, he and his mother were the first American casualties of Japanese bombing there, just hours after Pearl Harbor. His parents and he were interned for the next three years. When they eventually returned to the United States, sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge, four-year-old Earl told someone he wasn’t excited: “It’s just another prison camp.”
The family settled in northern Virginia, adding his sister Elizabeth in 1946. Earl graduated from Herndon High School and went on to earn degrees from Amherst College (1961) and the University of Virginia School of Law (1967), where he served as editor-in-chief of the Virginia Law Review. While at Amherst he met Louise Merrill, a student at Smith College, whom he married in Tacoma, Washington, in 1961.
Before turning to the law, he worked as a journalist in New York City for two years, first as an entry-level copyboy at the New York Times and then as a desk editor at UPI.
The first half of his legal career was in Washington, DC, beginning with a clerkship at the U.S. Supreme Court for retired Justice Stanley Reed and Chief Justice Earl Warren. He focused on litigation from the start at several firms, including Williams & Connolly and Nussbaum, Owen & Webster. One of the most significant cases he worked on was Morrison v. Olson, in which the Supreme Court eventually confirmed the constitutionality of the independent counsel statute, which provides a way to investigate executive branch officials independently of the Justice Department.
Earl was recruited in the mid-70s to become general counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, where he also served as speechwriter for the chair, Rep. Peter Rodino. He wrote Rodino’s speech nominating Jimmy Carter, though was disappointed that the 1976 convention floor was so crowded and noisy that he couldn’t see or hear it being delivered.
While still practicing law, he taught as an adjunct at Georgetown and the University of Virginia and as a faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. In 1989, having thoroughly enjoyed those experiences and feeling that litigation was a young man’s game, he joined the full-time faculty at Virginia’s law school. He taught there for 19 years, particularly enjoying classes in civil procedure, evidence, constitutional law, and trial advocacy, as well as time spent with students outside the classroom. He continued to be a friend and mentor to many of them for years after their graduation.
As the dean said at the time of his retirement in 2008, “Earl Dudley is one of the last of the great generalists, one of the last exemplars of the long tradition of lawyers who entered the academy after a full career of accomplishment elsewhere. . . . He was not merely teaching students subjects of importance to law; he was teaching them how to be lawyers. . . . They took Earl to heart, respected him, admired him, talked to him—really talked with him, as they do not do with many teachers—and sought his advice on every imaginable subject. In the end they loved him.”
Earl retired in anticipation of doing genealogical research, taking more photographs (he captured almost all of Virginia’s 95 courthouses on rural road trips with Louise), traveling, and playing more golf. A balky back prevented the latter, but he did write and publish a memoir, An Interested Life, and spent hours at the Library of Virginia in Richmond researching his family roots.
He is survived by his wife of 63 years; son William C. Dudley (Carola) of Lexington, and daughter Susan Dudley Stout of Charlottesville; three grandchildren, Cole, Ella and Jay; and his sister, Elizabeth Dudley Wilbur (Frederick) of Lovingston.
The family is grateful for the love and support of many friends, caretakers and the wonderful HealthCare 3 staff at Westminster-Canterbury.
Interment will be private at Panorama Natural Burial. A reception celebrating his life will be held at Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, October 6, allowing time for those who want to receive booster shots before all the hugs.
Contributions in his memory would be welcomed by the Class of 1967 Earl C. Dudley, Jr./Richard C. Lowery Scholarship Fund at the UVA law school, law.virginia.edu/give; the Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge Foundation, westminstercanterbury.org/foundation; or the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, AL, eji.org/about/?campaign=447413.
