Page 9 - The First Fifty Years
P. 9

Do Not Delete  1/8/2015 10:14 AM

               ESSAY

                             DRIVEN:
                 THE FIRST DECADE OF
                 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

                                     Craig Joyce

      In the beginning was . . . the word?1 Not exactly. Before
Houston Law Review was begat, the University of Houston was.
No one can understand the history of HLR without knowing the
history of the institution from which it sprang.

             Andrews Kurth Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center. I am indebted
hugely to the student members of Houston Law Review, whose diligent efforts helped so much
to make possible the publication of this first installment of a planned five-part telling, decade-
by-decade from 1963 to date, of the history of a remarkable institution. In particular, I thank
Matthew Hoffman, Editor in Chief of Board 49 and University of Houston Law Center Class of
2012, who shared the vision, green-lighted the effort, and advanced the project’s progress in
every way possible. Mr. Hoffman will become, officially, a co-author of the series, beginning
with its second installment. Thanks as well to Rebekah Reed of Board 49 and Katherine Witty
of Board 50, for their generous gifts of time and insight during the preparation of this
manuscript, to Peter Danysh, Casey Holder, and Cade Mason, Board 50’s Editor in Chief, Chief
Articles Editor, and Managing Editor respectively, for graciously allowing my “voice” to survive
the Review’s rigorous editing process, and to the many 2Ls and 3Ls who provided incidental
labor along the way. I am grateful, too, to Mike Willatt (Board 1), Marvin Nathan (Boards 2
and 3), Lawrence Pirtle (Board 3), Alvin Zimmerman (Boards 3 and 4), Wendell Alcorn (Boards
5 and 6), Steven Segal (Boards 7 and 8), and Carol Dinkins (also Boards 7 and 8), and D.
Jansing Baker (Board 10), all of whom contributed substantively to the present essay, and to
Christopher Dykes, Reference and Research Librarian at the O’Quinn Law Library, for helpful
assistance in the compilation of data. Due to the careful reading accorded the manuscript by so
many former editorial board members (including Board of Directors chair Robert Sergesketter
and vice chair Justice Jeff Brown, both Board 32, and my long-time, greatly-to-be-revered
faculty colleague John Mixon), readers have been spared many an error that otherwise might
have been published in the pages that follow. Most of all, I express my profound appreciation to
all the members of Boards 1 through 10, who actually lived the story I have been privileged
merely to recount.

      In keeping with the general practice in historical essays, all notations hereafter appear as
endnotes at the conclusion of this essay, where the reader will find also a compilation of
statistical trivia of perhaps more than passing interest, at least to some!

                                             3
   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14