The papers of John Ritchie III include professional papers, mainly correspondence, concerning legal education. There are also files that are related to his deanships at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Wisconsin, and Northwestern University, as well as files that document his years at Virginia from 1972 until his death in 1988. His files reflect the range and intensity of his work after his official retirement. Predominant are the manuscripts and correspondence for
This collection was a gift of Professor John Ritchie III in 1978 and 1991. In 1997 a box with his files was found in the library basement and added to this collection.
After practicing law briefly in 1927 and 1928, Ritchie taught law at Furman University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Maryland before returning to teach at his alma mater in 1937. During World War II, he served as colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Corps and was awarded several decorations. In 1952, he left Virginia to serve as dean at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Wisconsin. In 1957 he became dean at Northwestern University, where he remained until mandatory retirement in 1972. He became the first John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law at Northwestern in 1966.
Jack Ritchie was a well-loved dean at Northwestern. According to the
In addition to his administrative duties, Ritchie taught trusts, and along with co-authors Neill H. Alford Jr. and Richard W. Effland, wrote the casebook,
When he reached the age of sixty-eight and had to retire from the deanship at Northwestern, Ritchie returned to the University of Virginia, taught full-time for two more years, and then became scholar-in-residence. An extraordinarily active man, he was not entirely "in residence," because in the next three years he visited at the University of Tennessee, the University of Oklahoma, and the College of William and Mary. In the mid-1970s, he began work on a history of the University of Virginia Law School,