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

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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.

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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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Class Gus Hodges, law professor and dean of the special jury issue in Texas, graduated a year after Keeton. He recalls one day in Slayton's procedure course when Keeton gave the lecture. Hodges, whose Texas nasal twang and now great snowy moustache are as much law school institutions as the Dean's own gravelly, ebullient style, recalls that he, Keeton and others had been to a legal fraternity party the night before and of course, we had been drinking and not doing any studying. Well, the next day in class, Keeton called on everybody who'd been at the party. Keeton refuses to take himself too seriously. A favorite story he tells recalls the woman who telephoned the law school and wanted to talk to someone about getting her son into law school. I'll let you talk with Dean Keeton, the switchboard operator said. Oh, no, the woman said I don't need to talk to him. Isn't there someone lower I could talk to? Ma'am, came the operator's reply, there's no one around here any lower than the Dean. Those around Page Keeton find they can't take themselves too seriously either. At a convocation at the school drawing top lawyers from all over Texas, Keeton introduced the main speaker—an eminent professor from one of the most prestigious eastern law schools. Our speaker,” the Dean said, is one of the foremost experts in the law of sales. But that isn't saying much, because there aren't too many people who know anything about sales. The dean, who has shown himself willing to put his job on the line when he felt the stakes were high enough, has seldom lost his perspective or his wry outlook on life. I read in the paper one day that 1 was going to be kicked out as dean of the law school,' he matter-of-factly told a group of listeners. Then I read that I was going to be named president of the University. Well, I stayed awake all night, wondering which one of those horrible things was going to happen to me.