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

Page 14 text:

Along with admonitions and homilies he directs to each year's incoming class, Keeton suggests they Follow advice which he has taken to heart: work hard and have a good time. He has been arriving for work at 7:30 a.m. weekdays and coming in on Saturdays for the last ten years. He averaged ten hours a week for five years as chairman of the Penal Code Revision Committee. He served on the Texas Constitutional Revision Commission. He teaches fulltime. He really practices what he preaches, observed one of his first-year torts students. That's the way he runs his class. He works us hard, but we have a good time.

Page 13 text:

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.

Page 15 text:

Running a national law school has become an increasingly complicated affair, according to Keeton. There was a time in the history of legal education when about all you were expected to do was to train students for admission to the bar. But society has become more and more complex. Law schools are expected to serve more functions than they once did. Such as? Of course, the first and most important function of any law school is to train students to become lawyers, he said, but there's more.” The law is changing so dramatically that the practicing bar looks to the school for continuing legal education. Further, legal educators have a responsibility to assist in law reform efforts and add to legal research for the benefit of bench and bar, according to the Dean. Finally, those of us in law school are in a position of being independent of any interest groups in society and I think we ought to be spokesmen for what we consider to be the essential characteristics of the free society. After all, the most complex and challenging task of mankind today is the ordering of human relations. That's infinitely more difficult, more complex and more controversial than technology. The law is the means by which we get order in society and those involved in the law have the primary responsibility in this area. I think this is why so many people are studying the law. They are perceptive enough to realize that the law is where the action is now. The more 1 learn about things, Keeton says, and the more I'm around my colleagues, the more I realize that no one person has access to the Truth; and that the law school has within its faculty, experts who are highly trained and very capable people but with different ideas and views. That creates a challenging intellectual atmosphere. I don't believe in selecting people because of the point of view they might have. It would be a dull place if everybody felt the same way. Although Keeton is leaving the deanship, he's not really leaving the law school. After a year's leave of absence, he'll be back in the classroom. New batches of first-year students will hear him growl out the finer points of tort law, will learn to appreciate his steady stream of pointed hypothetical and his rough and ready classroom style. Page Keeton's achievements as dean are manifest. There's no question that he's enjoyed it. But how about disappointments? Well, no, not really. I ought to be able to think of some major disappointments, but I really can't.