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22 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

2001, are no place to put a law school.
16. MIXON, supra note 2, at 113–15.
17. Id. at 49–52.
18. Id. at 120–23.
19. Id. at 113 (from an October 2012 draft revised subsequent to this essay’s original

publication).
20. Id. at 130–33.
21. Id. at 122–23.
22. See generally id. at 183–232.
23. Id. at 133–34; see also supra note 13 (discussing Dean Blakely’s commitment to

sending his local hires off to elite law schools to burnish their credentials with LL.M.s).
24. MIXON, supra note 2, at 122.
25. Id. at 224–26. See particularly, hereafter, the story of Decade Two: Carry On Boldly.
26. MIXON, supra note 2, at 234–46.
27. Id. at 298–99. A.A. White himself succeeded Neibel as dean, but only in a caretaker

capacity. Id. at 304–05.
28. Id. at 186.
29. For the motivations of the early leaders of Houston Law Review, see “The Boys of

Pointe du HLR” below.
30. One leading figure was Charles I. Francis, to whom Volume 8 was dedicated. Francis

was vital in covering HLR’s start-up costs and contributing vision to the organization. The
editors of Volume 8 praised Charles Francis, a graduate of the University of Texas School of
Law, for “realiz[ing] that the country needed more good law schools and that competition
stimulated education.” Dedication, 8 HOUS. L. REV. xxxi (1970).

31. MIXON, supra note 2, at 186–87.
32. Officially, as originally numbered, Volume I. The use of Romans for volume numbers
was discontinued after only one volume and replaced in Volume 2 by the use of Arabic
numerals (although not in the numbering of boards on the mastheads).
33. Originally christened the Manned Spacecraft Center but renamed in 1973 after
former President (and Texan) Lyndon B. Johnson’s death, JSC would guide all U.S. space
flight from Gemini through the current International Space Station. Mission Control Fact
Sheet, Houston, NASA.GOV, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/160406main_mission_
control_fact_sheet.pdf (last visited Aug. 28, 2012).
34. Dan G. Matthews, Editor’s Page, 1 HOUS. L. REV. viii, viii (1963).
35. MIXON, supra note 2, at 186–87.
36. Mike Willatt, who served as the articles editor for Volume 1, notes dryly: “My major
responsibility was to find some articles. I suspect that the role has not changed, but the menu
of contributors has probably enlarged considerably.” Questionnaire Response, Mike Willatt,
Willatt & Flickinger (Nov. 3, 2011) (on file with Houston Law Review).
37. Physical copies of Volume 2 contain three different mastheads, an artifact indicative
of the Review’s continually changing membership. Members came and went, as one former
Editor in Chief recalls, “without any real predictability.” Some finished their degrees in mid-
year; others accumulated the hours necessary to take the bar exam, got their licenses, and
departed without obtaining a degree at all. “We never thought of ourselves as being on the
board as a group, because there was a lot of transition within the boards. . . . We never knew
from semester to semester who would be there.” Interview by Rebekah Reed with Marvin
Nathan, Senior Partner, Nathan Sommers Jacobs (Feb. 16, 2012) (on file with Houston Law
Review).
38. Ultimately, the article was published as Trouble in a Bottle (absent any mention of
condoms or cockroaches in the title) by Baylor Law Review in 1964. See generally Arthur N.
Bishop Jr., Trouble in a Bottle, 16 BAYLOR L. REV. 337 (1964).
39. Regrettably, brevity and clarity—not to mention the failure of early volumes of the
Review to disclose the authorship, whether student or professional, of notes, comments, and