Page 152 - The First Fifty Years

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146 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW
District Court Judge Mike Engelhart and Texas Supreme Court
Justice Jeff Brown.

A Title, a Title, My Kingdom for a Title! Here, the
sentimental favorite for best title of the decade is, inescapably,
Professor Buchanan’s No Connecticut Yankee in the Texas
Supreme Court, 40 HOUS. L. REV. 931 (2003). (Unless deeply
interested in permissible uses of extrinsic evidence in construing
wills, the reader is advised to stick with just enjoying the title.)
Then again, who could resist David Robinson’s From Fat Tony
and Matty the Horse to the Sad Case of A.T.: Defensive and
Offensive Use of Hearsay Evidence in Criminal Cases, 32 HOUS.
L. REV. 895 (1995)? (We “hear say” it’s about what it sounds like.)

Fish, Meet Barrel. During Houston Law Review’s Decade 4,
and following its by-now established tradition, four of ten Editors
in Chief were women. Meanwhile, a Cambridge, Mass.,
similarly-initialed journal had added an historic first to its own
distinguished record: a first black President (one “Barack H.
Obama,” who would later gain the same title in another, and
bigger, league). Kudos to Cambridge for a prescient choice.
Ahem, but as we were saying . . . By the end of its fourth decade,
in the tabulation of women EICs at South versus women
Presidents at North, the contrast between the junior and senior
circuits had become pronounced. Houston Law Review, at 40, was
no rookie; and Harvard Law Review, at 116, had long since
entered the Hall of Fame. Nonetheless, as HOUS. L. REV. stepped
up to the plate for Decade 5, the shellacking continued. For those
scoring (these stats don’t lie): Bayou City HLR, 12 for 40 (batting
.300); Beantown HLR, 4 for 116 (a measly .034). The lead? Now
insurmountable. In law reviews, as in life and Little League,
there is, or should be, a 10-run rule.