Page 23 - The First Fifty Years

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DRIVEN 17

expected to. A perfect aristocracy, then, because continued
membership is based on higher performance than is
demanded of non-members. Now this law review is a scientific
publication, on which in good part the reputation of the school
depends. Here is a thing American. Here is a thing Americans
may well be proud of. There is not so far as I know in the
world an academic faculty which joins its reputation before
the public upon the work of undergraduate students—there is
none, except in the American law reviews. Such an institution
it is an honor to belong to. And by virtue of the terms of tenure
of office of this you may be sure: to earn that honor is to earn
an education. I hold out before you, then, as the goal of highest
achievement in your first year, this chance to enter on real
training in your second.54
At the University of Houston College of Law during Decade 1,
what sort of person rose to that challenge?

The Boys of Pointe du HLR55

The young men and women who served on HLR during its
early years bore the burden not only of advancing their own careers
but also of bringing closer to reality the dream of excellence that
A.A. White had dreamed for the College of Law and the first-born of
its scholarly publications, Houston Law Review.56

Truth to tell, the “men and women” of Decade 1 were mostly
men. Given the demographics of law school enrollments nationwide
at the time, things could hardly have been otherwise.

But by only the seventh year of its existence (Board 7 in 1969–
70), Houston Law Review had its first female Editor in Chief,
Marjorie Caldwell.57 Carol Eggert Dinkins,58 who served on
Caldwell’s successor board and helped oversee the publication of
Volume 8, has clear memories of life at the College of Law of that
era:

There were not many women—[I along with] two
others walked across the stage [at Commencement] in June of
1971 . . . . The professors were, as you would imagine, very
professional with us and made no distinctions between us and
the male students. It was not easy for women to get a job in
those days, and there weren’t many in the firms. For example,
Marjorie was the first woman associate at V&E [Vinson &
Elkins] in 1970 . . . . When I made partner at the end of 1979,
Texas Monthly carried a blurb about it, as it was the first for
any large law firm in Texas.59
Seven years after Marjorie Caldwell became Editor in Chief of
Houston Law Review’s Volume 7, the “other HLR” (Harvard Law