Former Supreme Court Justice Randy Holland dies

Members of the Delaware judiciary are mourning the loss of one of their own, retired Delaware Supreme Court Justice Randy J. Holland, who died March 15.

“The Delaware judiciary mourns the loss of one of our greatest public servants,” said Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr., who served with Holland from 2015 to 2017. “Randy Holland served on the Delaware Supreme Court for over 30 years. He wrote cogent and authoritative opinions in all areas of the law that have withstood the test of time. He championed the highest ethical standards for Delaware lawyers and judges. As president of the American Inns of Court, he worked to further its nationwide mission to improve the skills, professionalism and ethics of the bench and bar. Most recently, he chaired a court committee to work on bail reform in domestic violence cases. What Justice Randy Holland will be most remembered for is his kindness, humility and graciousness, and his personal notes written with a blue felt-tip pen. The Supreme Court will recognize this giant of a man in a future event. His family will be in our prayers.”

“This is a tremendous loss for our state,” said Gov. John Carney. “Justice Holland was a true public servant and a steady source of wisdom on Delaware’s Supreme Court for more than three decades. He had a deep knowledge of the Constitution and Delaware’s unique history. His books on the Delaware Constitution have served as a guide for countless public officials in our state. And I have personally sought his counsel many times during my time in office. He was a thoughtful, model jurist and will be greatly missed. Tracey and I are praying for Justice Holland’s family, and his many friends across our state, during this difficult time.”

Holland was appointed and reappointed to the Delaware Supreme Court by three governors and served with four chief justices during his tenure on the bench. At his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986 by Gov. Mike Castle, Holland became the youngest person ever to serve on the state’s highest court; he went on to also become the court’s longest-serving justice as of his retirement in March 2017. Throughout his 30 years on the bench, Holland wrote more than 700 reported opinions and several thousand case dispositive orders.

“Delaware just lost one of its true servants,” said former Chief Justice Leo E. Strine Jr., who served with Holland from 2014 to 2017. “No one loved our state or its bar more than Justice Holland. Through his dedication to the judicial craft, his fostering of bench-bar relations through the Inns of Court movement, his preservation of our state’s history, and his concern for the most vulnerable of litigants – particularly the children served by our Family Court – Randy made our state a better place and burnished its reputation as a legal center of excellence. We will miss his friendship and are profoundly sorry for his family’s irreplaceable loss.”

During his years on the court, Holland was known as not only an expert on state constitutional law but also as an avid historian of Delaware and the Delaware Supreme Court. He authored or co-authored 10 books, including two books on the Delaware Constitution, two histories of the Delaware Supreme Court, and a history of the Delaware bar in the 20th century, in addition to many law review articles.

“Justice Holland was a great and historic jurist of the court,” said former Chief Justice E. Norman Veasey, who served with Holland from 1992 to 2004. “Indeed, he was a quintessential and intellectual jurist with an extraordinary grounding in the law, and a marvelous sense of fairness and equity. Above all, he was a warm and noble human being – a truly good man in all respects. He was devoted to his wife of 50 years, Dr. Ilona Holland, their son, Ethan, daughter-in-law Jen, and their granddaughters, Rori and Chloe. He will be missed in ways we have not begun to fathom by all who knew him, worked with him, and admired him.”

Holland graduated from Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he received the Loughlin Award for legal ethics. He later earned a master of laws in judicial process from the University of Virginia Law School and was awarded honorary doctor of law degrees by the Delaware Law School and Swarthmore College. He taught corporate governance, appellate practice and state constitutional law, and frequently focused on business ethics. He travelled internationally to advance corporate governance and ethics, including working with the justice system in Taiwan. On several occasions, he hosted visiting delegations from Taiwan to Delaware.

After leaving the Delaware Supreme Court, he became senior of counsel in the Wilmington office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. In 2018, the Randy J. Holland Family Law Endowment was created in his honor for the Combined Campaign for Justice to fund a full-time fellowship position to serve the family law needs for low-income families.