Page 90 - The First Fifty Years

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84 HOUSTON LAW REVIEW

rankings of specialized programs in law, U.S. News recognized
HLPI itself as the #1 health law program in the nation (a
distinction of which the program would retain almost exclusive
possession during the Rothsteins’ entire remaining stay in
Houston).21

At the core of HLPI’s non-degree based activities, however,
was scholarship—and, specifically, scholarship published
through Houston Law Review. Beginning in 1987, the Institute
and the Review collaborated almost annually on what became an
extensive series of twelve symposium issues. The symposia
featured their share of prominent political figures,22 but more
importantly, they presented the output of the very finest health
law scholars in the United States and from around the world in
the pages of Houston Law Review. A full listing of the symposia
by year appears in the notes,23 and a summary of their contents
and importance follows in the text hereafter.

In academia as in life, however, nothing is forever. In 2000,
prompted by a series of mutual concerns,24 but mostly by the
desire of the burgeoning population of students attracted to the
University of Houston by health law studies, the Institute
decided to strike out on its own by launching, as a vehicle for
health law scholarship and as a training experience of interested
UHLC students, a new student-edited journal: Houston Journal
of Health Law and Policy.25

By then, however, the Health Law and Policy Institute, as
one of the first and certainly the strongest of the early institutes,
centers, and programs, already had made an enormous and
irreversible contribution to the people and institutions around it.
More than any other development during the “centering” of the
University of Houston’s former College of Law, the Health Law
Symposia series brought the Law Center, and Houston Law
Review, the dramatically enhanced national standing each had
long sought.

The Center and the Review

The institutional changes impacting the law school during
the Review’s third decade also brought about change in the way
HLR did business. Structurally, logistically, and financially, the
Review took steps to professionalize further what was becoming a
leading national law journal. As a reflection of the sound
decisionmaking of Decade 3’s student editors, faculty advisors,
and directors, many of the decisions made then remain in place
two decades later.