Page 179 - The First Fifty Years

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ENDURINGLY GREAT 173

numerous observations. Justice Keyes, for example, despite her
doctorate in philosophy, found that the subject “didn’t affect real
life enough. Law is not abstract. Real people are affected by what
we do all the time [as lawyers],”87 including as judges. Picking up
on Keyes’s observation about “our appellate law being scholarly,
but scholarly common sense,” Judge Cochran related writing her
opinions for a perhaps unusual audience. “When I first started,”
she said, “I always had . . . my 12-year-old grandson read[ ]
them. . . . [N]ow I have . . . somebody else, always a non-lawyer,
read[ ] them. Because if they don’t make sense to non-lawyers,
then you just haven’t gotten your job done.”88

None of the female jurists on the panel believed they had
been discriminated against as women during law school. Judge
Cochran: “No, not at all.”89 Justice Sondock: “[I]f there was any
discrimination about any woman at this university, I’ve never
heard of it. And goodness knows, I didn’t know any.”90 Justice
Keyes: “I did not experience any discrimination here. I do think
that women in litigation have a hard time being recognized even
to this day . . . . They have to go out and make their
opportunities. . . . [T]here is discrimination still lingering, not
consciously, but it is there. I don’t think that was true [at the
Law Center].”91

All of the judges have memories of Newell Blakely. Dean
Newell H. Blakely’s discipline in the classroom was the stuff of
legend.92 Students, however, experienced him in different ways.
Judge Keyes, remembering Blakely’s absolute insistence on full
preparation for every class: “I was scared of him the whole
time.”93 Justice Sondock, recalling an office meeting in which she
stood up forcefully, on behalf of a male classmate with a 250-mile
daily round-trip commute, when she believed Blakely was
applying his attendance rules too strictly: “Well, it was an
experience. . . . [But] from that point on, he and I had a very
respectful relationship.”94 Judge Cochran, who inherited
responsibility for Blakely’s Texas Rules of Evidence Handbook
(now passed along to Justice Brown):95 “I just loved Professor
Blakely. Anything he taught, I took. And I loved every minute of
Evidence and have ever since. . . . I think he is just sort of one of
those very few people that you’re lucky to meet in a generation.”96
Justice Brown to Judge Cochran, summarizing: “[Y]ou learned
under the best.”97

Finally, there is the matter of judicial style and humor. Judge
Cochran, currently the senior serving judge among the four panel
participants, is renowned in this respect (as, of course, in many
others). A colleague on the Court of Criminal Appeals provides this
glimpse of Cochran on the bench and in chambers: