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

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'It was my point that you will never raise much money that way, Keeton says. Lawyers are interested in law school, engineers are interested in the engineering school, fine arts people are interested in fine arts, and so on. In 1952, after several years of controversy, the administration approved the foundation idea. When UCLA tried to hire Keeton away from UT, it gave him the opportunity to lay it on the line to the University Administration on the matter of inadequate faculty services. I was serious about it (accepting the UCLA offer) because 1 was very dejected about the fact that we had lost so many of our good people in recent years simply over money. Keeton's price for staying was a substantial increase in the budget of the Law School. I would say a 25 per cent increase, probably a 30 per cent increase in the salary budget of the Law School, immediately. The establishment of the Foundation and the price exacted by Keeton for his continued services gave the school the financial base it needed to rise to its present position of prominence because it now had the capacity to compete for top talent on a nationwide basis. Every law school will lose somebody it doesn't want to lose every now and then for a variety of reasons, but we have lost virtually no one simply because of financial reasons, according to Keeton. But it was after two decades at the helm of the UT Law School that Keeton was drawn reluctantly into his most publicized and important battle. The lines were drawn between the dean and his celebrated adversary Frank Erwin, then chairman of the Board of Regents. Erwin, Keeton recalls, frequently asserted that the Dean was one of the best teachers he had ever had (Keeton taught Erwin freshman contracts). But Erwin didn't agree with many of Keeton's administrative policies and procedures—namely faculty employment, admissions, and use of funds from gifts to the Law School Foundation, a separate legal entity. Erwin took his complaints to a Board of Regents executive session in which Keeton appeared and responded to the complaints. Keeton recalls that nothing happened as a result of that confrontation before the Board of Regents and that Erwin chose as the next forum the Texas Legislature to air his grievances against the Law School and Keeton's administration. Erwin got the Appropriations Committee to send up a proposal that would have set the Law School s budget for the next biennium at the then existing level unless specific changes were approved by the Governor. Keeton has always regarded the fight as an effort to force him to resign, but, he notes, the practicing bar has always been a great support for the law school and it can be a powerful body in influencing decisionmakers in both legislative and executive positions. He credits the bar together with law students and faculty with saving the law school from disaster. Page 7

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Keeton enjoyed his law school days and took every honor in sight—Texas Law Review editor. Order of the Coif, Phi Beta Kappa, Chancellors, President of the law school student body. He graduated in 1931 when the depression had really taken hold. It was really rough. Lawyers weren't making any money generally and nobody was hiring lawyers. I don't remember but two people who got jobs in our class where they were on a salary. Nearly everybody went somewhere and either opened up an office or was allowed by other lawyers to have some space in their offices and just pick up whatever business came in. He planned to return home to Vernon and run for county attorney, but instead he took an offer to stay on at the law school as an assistant to Judge Robert W. Stay ton and as business manager of the Texas Law Review. He moved to a faculty post the next year when a vacancy occurred. Keeton says that he's never regretted choosing an academic administrator-teacher's role over what would probably have been a prosperous personal injury practice. I think I would have enjoyed it (private practice), but I have no regrets because I don't see how I could have gotten more satisfaction out of that than I have gotten out of what 1 have done. What Keeton did was to teach at UT until 1942 (with a brief teaching-study stint at Harvard where he earned a S.J.D.) when he went to Washington, D.C. to fight the battles of the Potomac in the Office of Price Administration overseeing price control and supply of petroleum and petroleum products for three years. At the end of that period, he turned down a job with the legal department of a large oil company to return to teaching at UT. In 1946, at the age of 37, he went to the University of Oklahoma to be dean of the law school there. Three years later he was back in Texas as dean of his alma mater. When Keeton returned to Texas it was a good law school, but a good school with problems, money problems. Texas had become a training ground for young law professors. As soon as a young professor had established himself as an outstanding teacher, another law school would outbid UT for his services, usually paying 50 to 75 per cent more. Within the space of ten years, two things happened that turned the law school around, in Keeton's estimation. The first was the creation of the University of Texas Law School Foundation. The second was precipitated by the offer of the deanship of UCLA Law School to Keeton. The idea of allowing a separate corporation to solicit funds for the Law School met considerable resistance from the University administration. The operating procedure up to that time had been to solicit gifts for the University as a whole, leaving to the top school executives the decisions as to how the money would be spent. FROM I OP TO BOTTOM: Page Keeton as young faculty member; the Keeton family; Page Keeton and his wife Madge at the special Keeton Convocation. Page 6

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'King of Torts' in His Keeton's field is torts or personal injury law, a subject taught to every first-year law student in the country, but nobody teaches it like he does. He does things to the Socratic method of pedagogy that Socrates would not believe but undoubtedly would approve. Everyone who has taken Keeton's torts class has his favorite Keeton story. One is the story of a man who wandered onto a construction site and decided to avail himself of a portable toilet placed there for the convenience of the workers. During the course of his repose, an explosion destroyed the toilet and disrobed the startled occupant. Now, growls Keeton with the straightest professorial face, the question is whether this unfortunate victim is classified as a naked trespasser or a bare licensee. In the course of his classroom analysis of tricky jurisprudence, the dean is likely to admonish his students not to jump to conclusions by telling the story of two unsophisticated East Texas boys who took their first train ride. They were simple folks and they'd never seen a train before in their lives. Well, a man came up selling bananas. They'd never seen any bananas before, but they bought some. The first boy proceeded to peel his banana and eat the whole thing just as the train went through a long tunnel—everything went black as pitch. As the train emerged into the light, his friend was about to bite into his banana. My God, the first one cried. Don't eat that thing—it'll make you go blind. One student observed, He cares about his students and he doesn't have any sacred cows—except the jury system. It's much more fun, more exciting to teach torts to the students at the UT Law School today than it was to teach torts to the students when I first started teaching. The class is a highly select group and much more intellectually elite, Keeton says. The students are more critical and more inquiring, and are not as willing to accept what judges say in opinions as they were then. And I think that's good. But, today's law students are not as industrious as those of Keeton's generation, the Dean says. I think we were harder working when I was in law school in the depths of depression, he adds. Some students today have had everything and they think everything ought to come to them.