Page 57 - The First Fifty Years

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CARRY ON BOLDLY 51

Newell Blakely’s Evidence

The Man. In any pantheon of great law professors at the
University of Houston, Newell Blakely must rank among the
highest of deities. Four times—upon his retirement as Dean in
1965,64 the publication of the Texas Rules of Evidence Handbook
for which he is justly famed in 1983,65 his transition to Professor
of Law Emeritus in 1987,66 and the publication of the Evidence
Handbook’s second edition in 199367—Blakely would be honored
by a dedication in Houston Law Review.

Newell Blakely’s arrival at the University of Houston
College of Law (and indeed his deanship) preceded, of course, the
decade of HLR’s history that is the subject of the present essay.68
Thus, Blakely’s early years at the College of Law have been
treated extensively in the predecessor essay, Driven: The First
Decade of Houston Law Review.69

Entirely germane here, however, is Blakely’s changing
relationship, over time, with Houston Law Review. As dean (and
also chancellor of the exchequer), he had not supported HLR’s
founding with marked enthusiasm, instead requiring the
students who sought to create the College’s first student-run
academic journal to find their own start-up funding.70 Nor did he
contribute any scholarship to HLR in Decade 1.

Yet, in time, Newell Blakely apparently mellowed, at least
toward Houston Law Review. Famously demanding as a Socratic
instructor, he could intimidate. While “stupid answers were no
sin in Blakely’s class” (because they were expected), his former
pupil and later colleague John Mixon reports that
“[u]npreparedness, on the other hand, was never acceptable.”71

Consider, then, the following testimony, from the 1976–1977
academic year, by Nancy Taylor Reed (Shivers), Editor in Chief
of Board 14:

I took Blakely’s evidence class my last semester thinking it
would be helpful for the bar exam. The law review workload
by then was really tough, and I was not prepared as one
was always supposed to be. Blakely called on me mid-
semester and I rose to say I was not prepared. Much to my
amazement another student rose and stated he would
respond for me. Later when I summoned the nerve to speak
to Blakely, he just said something to the effect that he
understood what I was doing for the law review and the
school.72

By Board 17 in 1979–1980, Professor Blakely had decided
that a contribution to Houston Law Review—his first—might be
in order. The resulting disquisition, Past Recollection Recorded: