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82 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

accompanied by the continued strength of the school’s basic J.D.
program. The history of UHLC’s institutes and centers has,
however, received scant attention.

One of the programs—what began as the Computer Law
Institute in 198515—was joined by the companion Intellectual
Property Law Program in 1991, and combined with the latter to
form the current Institute for Intellectual Property &
Information Law (IPIL) in 1999. IPIL’s history recently has
received at least limited treatment elsewhere16 (and will merit
further attention in the Decade 4 narrative).

By far the dominant institute of Decade 3, however, and a
powerhouse well beyond those years—one might even venture to
describe it as “the 800-pound gorilla of the specialized programs”
if certain that the characterization would be taken admiringly, as
it is meant, rather than as an unfortunate contrast with the
“gentle Lowlands birds” so recently referenced—was what came
to be known, after a 1986 name change, as the Health Law &
Policy Institute (HLPI or Health Law). From the mid-1980s
forward, the Law Center’s Health Law program, thanks to
dynamic leadership, dedicated faculty, staff, students, and local
supporters, and enthusiastic encouragement by Law Center and
University of Houston administrators and the Texas State
Legislature, has produced an unequalled display of sustained
excellence in its field.

The University of Houston’s interest in health law stretched
back to the beginning days of Houston Law Review. Even as a
young professor, John B. Neibel (whose construction and
expansion of the new College of Law buildings in 1969 and 1975
had so greatly influenced the size of HLR’s membership and the
scope of its ambitions17) had held a special interest in teaching
and studying law and medicine. Indeed Neibel’s article,
Implications of Robinson v. California,18 concerning drug
addiction as a problem for law and society, had graced the first
pages of the Review’s very first issue back in 1963.

Interest in expanding UH’s law-and-medicine connections
continued into the mid-1970s. The interactions included,
particularly, conversations between College of Law
administrators and Dr. Margery W. Shaw, a world-renowned
geneticist at the University of Texas Health Science Center’s
School of Public Health in Houston—who also happened to hold a
1973 UH law degree. Initial organizational efforts failed,
however, due to personnel issues, until in 1978 the College of
Law formally created a Health Law Institute, with Shaw herself
coming on-board as its first director the following year.19