Page 14 - The First Fifty Years

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8 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

decade to bridge the gap between White’s founding vision for the
College of Law and the more local version espoused by Blakely.
Along the way, many capable hires joined the faculty’s ranks (none
more notable for this history of Houston Law Review than a
University of Michigan Law School graduate and local Houston
practitioner named Sidney Buchanan, of whom more later),25 and
Neibel succeeded in building a new building—a concept first urged
by White, then adopted by Blakely, but finally made a reality (albeit
on the University of Houston campus and on a huge scale which
neither White nor Blakely had imagined) by Neibel.26

Then Neibel himself was gone, in a rare show of faculty
unanimity27 which suggested that the College of Law could no
longer straddle the White and Blakely visions. Sooner or later, one
would prevail. In the meantime, it seems fair to say, the law school
would exist somewhere in between.

In the meantime, too, the College of Law’s first student-led
journal would emerge amidst all of the institution’s upheavals. But
where would it fit within the landscape of the battle-scarred terrain
that lay between the competing visions of A.A. White and Newell
Blakely?

Enter Houston Law Review

Just before the foundations of Newell Blakely’s ideal law school
began to crumble, philosophically speaking, in 1963, he made a
fateful decision. Blakely had earlier observed to John Mixon, newly
returned from his year at Yale with an LL.M. in hand, that he knew
how to get national attention (had he wanted it) for the College of
Law: “Just hire a bunch of New York liberals who want to write law
review articles. That would do it.” But, the dean advised the
professor, “I wouldn’t want to teach in a school like that.”28

Many of Dean Blakely’s students, however, wanted to learn at
a law school like that—not a school with a bunch of New York
liberals as the faculty, necessarily, but one with a law review.29

The students got up a petition, evidently supported by
members of the faculty like White and Mixon. Even faced with a
formal request from a committee of the Student Bar Association,
however, Dean Blakely was reluctant. The students could have a
law review, he decided, but only if they raised enough cash to cover
start-up costs. With the assistance of College of Law alumni/ae and
other members of the Houston Bar,30 they did just that.31

Officially, Houston Law Review came into being on November
1, 1962, with the filing of its articles of incorporation at the office of
the Texas Secretary of State. The initial organizational meeting