Page 52 - The First Fifty Years

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46 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

So there it was again, the question that faced so many of the
boards which served during the first two decades of the HLR’s
history: how to make ends meet? By the end of Decade 2, the
Review would have to find an answer.

BEYOND COCKROACHES36
During its first decade of life, Houston Law Review had been
faced with existential issues—for example, whether to publish an
article partially titled Condoms and Cockroaches37—and survived
notwithstanding.38 The Decade 1 editors left behind the legacy of
an increasingly sophisticated publication growing in size, scope,
and prestige. The vanguard decade was about ramping up
production, increasing author quality, and expanding the scope of
its scholarship. But maintaining a commitment to serving the
practical needs of the Texas Bar was a parallel goal worth
pursuing—a goal that the journal would never abandon. Indeed,
the contents of Houston Law Review’s Volumes 11–20
demonstrate a continued interest in serving the Texas legal
community while simultaneously striving to attain consistently
high quality.

Highest Quality Service to the Texas Bar
By the end of the first decade, the Review had published
nationally relevant articles by nationally renowned scholars from
Harvard, Stanford, Pennsylvania, George Washington, and other
top institutions. Decade 2 continued the trend, featuring authors
from schools like Michigan, Columbia, NYU, and Duke. But the
contents of Decade 2 reveal more than a singular focus on big
names from established schools. The emphasis for this young
journal, embedded within a state law school still struggling
somewhat to define its own identity, was Texas-focused scholarship,
published at the highest level of quality. 39
Volume 11’s lead piece—more a book than a traditional law
review article40—succinctly encapsulates one of the major themes of
Decade 2: “This work includes chapters that are strictly practical in
nature . . . [and] is submitted to the bench and bar of Texas.”41 Jim
Perdue’s The Law of Texas Medical Malpractice spanned nine
chapters across all five issues of Volume 11. It meticulously
chronicled topics ranging from informed consent and evidentiary
burdens to physician negligence and vicarious liability. By the final
chapter, Texas lawyers had the closest thing to a treatise in the
field of medical malpractice that had yet existed.
Each article is structured identically: first, a quotation from
a famous personage—Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Marcus