University of Texas School of Law - Peregrinus Yearbook (Austin, TX)

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m. TOP LEFT: William Whitehurst, a 1970 graduate of UT Law, speaks to the entering class of freshlaws about public interest law in August. ABOVE LEFT; Students mingle at tfie Mentor Reception sponsored by ttie Career Services Office. BOTTOM CENTER: Students mingle with representatives from law firms at a spring reception. 10 S Around Townes

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Q. Would iiii Sen ' i( I)l ' is i(( he an optimist! A: Yeah, [laughs] Maybe even a ccickeyed optimist. Q: Do you consider yourself one! A: Not a cockeyed one, but yeah. I guess if 1 weren ' t somewhat of an optimist, I wouldn ' t keep doing this. Q: What drew you to that particular field! You said that you got into law for the purpose of helping. Is that why you chose this particular specialty! A: Yeah, I suppose. It ' s probably a matter of drifting into it, but obviously it ' s got a lot of interest for me or 1 wouldn ' t have stayed with it. Q; Do you teach a lot of classes on it! A: Sometimes. I do more religious liberty work in my Con Law survey than most sections do. Occasionally 1 teach a separate religious liberty course. 1 ha ' en ' t done that all that often. Q; Why did you choose to start teaching! A: It ' s a great job! I get to choose my own issues and work on what I want to work on. As long as I ' m produc- tive, the dean doesn ' t much care what I ' m producti e about. Q: B ' productive, do you mean research or teaching ! A: Well, both. 1 pull my weight in the classroom and steadily produce articles or books or whatever, and the articles and the books can be whatever I want to write. That ' s a luxury you don ' t have in many jobs. Q: What ' s your favorite thing to teach! A: I don ' t know. I ' ve mostly been teaching Remedies and Con Law for several years now, and I really like both of them. Not sure I have a favorite. Q; What brought you to Texas! A: It ' s far and away the best university where my wife and I both got jobs. We both had jobs in Chicago, but we ' re a lot better off here. Q: What about this place is better! A: It ' s a lot better on her side. On my side, this is just a bigger, more diverse, intellectually richer faculty. The size of the school is a bit of a disadvantage in terms of the serving the students ... but for the faculty, among them- selves, it ' s all upside and no downside to be so big. Q; You ' re quoted very often in the Texan. How did you get to be the go-to guy! A: Well, it ' s partly the coincidence that affirmative action and the free speech committee were news at the same time. I was chairman of the free speech committee, and I was active in the team that represented the Uni ' ersity in Hopwood. The attorney general didn ' t want publicity ... so I wound up being the one who would talk to the press. But then the rest sort of illegitimately followed from that. Texan reporters knew my name, so they ' d call me about stuff. We ' ve got the public affairs team now in the law school. They ' re trying to make us be more press-friendly, and when they can ' t figure out who should take a ques- tion, they send it to me, whether it makes any sense or Q: How often do you get calls from the Texan. ' A: Too often, [laughs] It differs. Some days a little, some days a lot. Sometimes for days at a time, not at all. One once called me and said, What do you teach? I can ' t remember why I called you. They write about all sorts of things inside and outside of the University, so they ' ll call and ask for explanations of court cases and legal develop- ments. I feel like they ' re our students, there ' s a teaching obligation to help them out, and you ' ve got to take their calls. Some faculty just won ' t talk to them because they know some people don ' t know what they ' re doing, and this would be misquoted, so avoid it. Q; Do you find you are misquoted often! A: I ' ve learned to be more careful with them. But yeah, sometimes - it ' s a hazard of answering the telephone for any reporter, but certainly a student reporter, that some- times you may be misquoted. Q; What ' s a typical day for you! A: One interruption after another, [laughs] When I was first starting out, I thought one of the advantages of teaching as compared to practice was that teaching, you could do one thing and work on it until you got it right and be fully satisfied with how you ' d handled that prob- lem. That turned out to be because I was brand-new and nobody knew me, and there was no reason for anyone to call me and ask anything. Now, between teaching and committee work and service work and reporters calling and colleagues at other law schools asking you to write a review for their latest book, some of the pro bono legal work I do and the congressional testimony - freeing up time to actually work on my own research has been hard, very hard. The day is spent here at the desk, on the phone, on the computer, reading and writing in lots of short bursts. Short-term deadlines drive the long-term projects. It ' s an occupational hazard. Q: What do ' oi( do for fi(n that has nothing to do with law! A: [laughs] I play chess with my son and go to football games. College football. Real football. We [wife and sons, 15 and 22] try to go on a serious vacation in the summer. The younger son plays chess. Beats me nearly every night. Q: Why do you think it ' s important to participate in debates like the affmnative action debate with Lino Qraglia in February! A: I ' m frankly sick and tired of debating Lino about affir- mative action, but to each cohort of students, it ' s new. I think the debate went well, but I actually forgot that Hopwood came down seven years ago. These students were in high school. I probably started out assuming they knew something about what was going on, and they did- n ' t. So I guess the real reason to do it is it ' s important to the student body and it affects the student body. Each new cohort needs and wants to learn about it. • Q A '

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TOP CENTER: A member of Outlaw pins an awareness ribbon on a fellow law student. TOP RIGHT: Runners brave the cold for Race Judicatta. ABOVE CENTER: Two students get to know each other duhng the Mentor Reception. ABOVE RIGHT: Counselor Donna Davis discusses the J word with first-year Justin Conner during a walk-in session in the atrium. LEFT: ABC newsman John Stossel addresses a crowd in September. Around Townes