Page 176 - The First Fifty Years

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170 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

shows how far the organization ha[d] come within [just a]
decade.”77

Like law professors everywhere, the faculty advisors have
mixed views about the editing process—at HLR and every other
law review. “[O]ur student editors,” says Dow, “ha[ve] gotten
better [over the years at not] using too heavy a pen in trying to
alter author style and author voice.” Alas, the prevailing culture
at law reviews “is that there tends to be this dominant idea
among . . . editors that every sentence needs a footnote, that if
you say ‘I woke up and the sun rose in the east’ you need a
footnote to some astronomical text.”78 Ragazzo agrees: “You
probably should let people say the sky is blue without footnoting
it.”79

Finally, the advisors agree also in their overall assessment of
Houston Law Review. Ragazzo: “[T]his is an organization of
which I am extremely proud. . . . [T]hey’ve made enormous
strides in the last 20 years. . . . I hope they continue on this
trajectory and I hope the school does as well . . . .” Oren: “[T]o
some degree they are coattails for us, for this school.” Ragazzo:
“That is amazing if you think about it. We will create a law
school [of] which the law review can be proud. We will work on
that!”80

Judges. In all, the project that generated these essays has
produced seven oral histories to date, counting for good measure
an upcoming history—the first instance of what will henceforth
become an annual event—of the outgoing board (in this
instance, 50) conducted by the incoming Editor in Chief (this
year, 51). Next up for exploration is the oral history convened to
discuss the intersections of law schools, law reviews, and judges.
The participants: three sitting and one retired jurist with
University of Houston Law Center ties, all to be identified in due
course.

In discussing their paths to the bench, each necessarily
has a different story, beginning with the retired member of the
panel, Ruby Kless Sondock.

Ruby Sondock was a double “first” for the Law Center: the
first woman to be appointed to the Harris County Court of
Domestic Relations (now the Family Court, which amazingly,
until Sondock’s appointment in 1973, had managed to get
along without a single female member since inception) and the
first regularly appointed woman justice of the Supreme Court
of Texas (taking office in 1982).81 Sondock had enrolled in the
University of Houston College of Law “with no intention of
practicing law. I was going to be the best legal secretary in