Page 65 - The First Fifty Years

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the Review greatly through enhanced scholarly specialization during Decade 3 in the
newly rechristened “Law Center.”

Of the transformation of the faculty that would mean so much to the future
success of the College of Law and Houston Law Review, Professor Mixon has written:
“George [Hardy] firmly established scholarship as a requirement for promotion and
tenure. That requirement marked a significant advance on our path to national
respectability.” Id. at 338.

25. Mastheads from the first two decades were formatted inconsistently. The first
16 boards memorialized their names in one-page mastheads. “Candidates”—i.e., the 1Ls
who had met HLR’s threshold qualifications for consideration but who still needed to
complete their 2L requirements to achieve membership—were not mentioned. The limited
information available in the board reports (only sometimes preserved from this period)
indicates that approximately 20% of the candidates never did so. Board of Directors
Meeting Minutes (Nov. 20, 1975) (on file with Houston Law Review). In years 17, 18, and
19, the Review began employing a separate one-page list of candidates to accompany the
traditional page listing editors and members. Board 20 combined the two pages into one.
After Board 30, candidates were dropped from the mastheads, which then assumed the
form they retain to this day.

26. The changing gender balance of board membership was little reflected, however,
in the content published by the journal. Despite such developments on the national scene
as approval by Congress in 1972 of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ultimately
ratified by fewer than “three fourths of the several States,” as required by Article V of the
Constitution, and therefore not adopted), the pages of Houston Law Review during Decade
2 contained surprisingly few articles which might fairly be characterized as reflecting
feminist legal theory. Perhaps those that came closest—the reader can judge for herself
how close—were Rodric B. Schoen, The Texas Equal Rights Amendment in the Courts,
1972–1977: A Review and Proposed Principles of Interpretation, 15 HOUS. L. REV. 537
(1978); Terry O. Tottenham et al., Texas Abortion Law: Consent Requirements and Special
Statutes, 18 HOUS. L. REV. 819 (1981); J. Thomas Oldham, Property Division in a Texas
Divorce of a Migrant Spouse: Heads He Wins, Tails She Loses, 19 HOUS. L. REV. 1 (1981);
and Rodric B. Schoen, The Texas Equal Rights Amendment After the First Decade, 20
HOUS. L. REV. 1321 (1983).

27. A related story, but one too long to tell in detail here, concerns the dynamic
between the building workload of the Review and the mechanics of actually publishing it.
The experiences of two boards at mid-decade illustrate the challenges.

When Board 15 took office in 1977, according to EIC Robert Pittsford, “the
Review was substantially behind the expected publishing schedule of five issues a year as
a result of problems that had occurred several boards before us.” Questionnaire Response,
Robert Pittsford (Oct. 17, 2012) [hereinafter Pittsford Questionnaire] (on file with
Houston Law Review). Nonetheless, reports Board 15 Managing Editor King Waters, the
students plugged forward. “The proudest events were: Publication of seven issues, as
candidates and board members, two books, a medical malpractice supplement, and
staging of the 1978 Energy Conference. We also produced a multi-volume index, sold off
excess copies of past issues, and held over two months of office in order to leave with our
last ‘catch-up’ issue at the printing plant on campus.” Questionnaire Response, King
Waters (Oct. 4, 2012) (on file with Houston Law Review). At least, says Pittsford, “[w]e
did not dig the hole deeper for the next Board and we produced some very fine works of
value to the bar.” Pittsford Questionnaire, supra.

Clearly, many of the problems faced by Board 15 and its predecessors had to do
not only with the volume of work being processed but with the now antiquated printing
technologies of the day—still analog, with typesetting, galley editing, page proofing, and
mail-out all done on campus. Moreover, although the College of Law’s administration
traditionally had funded printing for HLR, the deans’ chosen vehicle, the University of
Houston Press, was inadequate to the task. It fell to Donna Sue Burnett and Arline
Worsham, EIC and ME respectively of Board 16, to address that problem: