Page 181 - The First Fifty Years

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ENDURINGLY GREAT 175

with White, Blakely was a gifted teacher but a less dedicated
scholar.107 As dean, when students approached him (with White’s
support) about starting up a law review, Blakely demurred,
telling the students they could have a review only if they could
somehow find the funding. They did, and he agreed.108 Seventeen
years into HLR’s young life, Blakely wrote it an article.109 But
then, apparently impressed by the contributions the publication
was making to the school110 and possibly inspired by the wave of
new scholars hired onto the faculty from the mid-1970s
forward,111 he did something even more wonderful. In 1983,
following hard upon the promulgation of new evidence rules by
the Texas Supreme Court, Blakely helmed the Review’s
publication of the Texas Rules of Evidence Handbook112—a
monument of scholarship and, in years to come, a monumental
contributor to HLR’s bottom line.113

G. Sidney Buchanan. The contributions of the Review’s own
Captain Nice as a faculty advisor have been celebrated above.
What is worth noting separately here, because it speaks not only
to Buchanan’s cheerful support for the editors of Houston Law
Review personally over so many decades but also to his
unstinting efforts to provide grist for the mill of the Review’s
central mission, is the sheer mountain of HLR scholarship
produced by this one individual. During his long career, Professor
Buchanan published widely in all manner of national law
reviews. But his first love was always HOUS. L. REV. Beginning
with his initial article, The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination:
To What Extent Should It Protect a State Employee or
Professional Licensee Against the Loss of His State-Created
Status?,114 in 1967, extending through his magnum opus, The
Quest for Freedom: A Legal History of the Thirteenth
Amendment,115 in 1974, and concluding with A Tribute to John
Mixon,116 upon the occasion of his long-time faculty friend’s 50th
year in teaching, in 2006,117 Captain Nice would publish more
than two dozen times in the pages of Houston Law Review. No
slacker, he; an astonishing record of productivity.

Faces Forward. The contributions of White, Blakely, and
Buchanan to Houston Law Review are obvious and
unparalleled. While not as directly important to the Review’s
particular story, four other figures who arrived at the College
of Law after the Terrific Trio deserve brief mention here. John
Neibel, as dean, achieved one thing that his two predecessors
had not: he got the new buildings built.118 Without them, the
huge expansion of student enrollments, and HLR’s greatly