David B. Filvaroff

Published September 11, 2014 This content is archived.

David Filvaroff.

David B. Filvaroff, a faculty member and former dean of the UB Law School who, as an aide to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was one of the drafters of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, died Sept. 6 in Erie County Medical Center. He was 82.

Filvaroff, who had Parkinson’s disease, had been hospitalized since being injured in a fall on Aug. 26 in his Buffalo home.

Throughout his long career as a Supreme Court clerk, Justice Department official, private lawyer and law professor, Filvaroff maintained a passionate commitment to equal justice.

UB Law School Dean Makau Mutua said Filvaroff “was a forward-looking dean, a great scholar of the Constitution and a committed advocate for civil and human rights.”

Added Alan Carrel, vice dean of the law school: “He cared deeply about people who had a difficult road in life. He proved that with his work in Washington and later at the law school, where he was a mentor to numerous disadvantaged students.”

Filvaroff was a special assistant in the Justice Department under Kennedy during months of intensive negotiation between Congress and the White House in 1963-64 over the civil rights bill that ultimately transformed U.S. society. As the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson wrangled with the House and Senate over the bill, Filvaroff was a lead writer of the legal language that was drafted and redrafted to get adequate support for passage while still achieving the major goal of ending most forms of racial segregation. He also served as a liaison to key members of the congressional staff.

A native of Janesville, Wisconsin, Filvaroff worked summers on a family farm and later as a salesman in a store selling women’s shoes. In 1953 he earned a BS in economics from the University of Wisconsin, where he was editor of the student newspaper. He served in the Army from 1953-55 and then attended Harvard Law School, where he was in the top five of his 1958 graduating class and served on the Law Review. After four years in private practice at a firm in Cleveland, he moved to Washington and worked as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Arthur Goldberg.

In the Justice Department, Filvaroff was a special assistant to Nicholas Katzenbach when Katzenbach was deputy attorney general and then acting attorney general. In 1965 and 1966, he was general counsel to the President’s Council on Equal Opportunity, an intra-cabinet committee charged with coordinating and supervising civil rights activities of the federal government.

After leaving Washington, he began his academic career as a fellow in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and then taught courses in constitutional law, federal courts, prisoners’ rights, legislation, torts and international law at the law schools of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas.

He also found time for public service, directing a training program for Legal Services attorneys in Pennsylvania and serving on committees for prison reform and Legal Aid in Texas.

Filvaroff also played a role in international diplomacy in the late 1970s as a chief delegate and adviser to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 35-nation group set up by the United States, Soviet Union and 33 other nations under the Helsinki Accord to pursue peaceful methods of settling international disputes.

He was recruited by UB in 1988 to serve as the Law School’s 15th dean. After five years as dean, he stepped down to return to teaching as a full-time professor in the Law School. He remained on the faculty until his retirement in 2009.