Professor Robert O. Dawson, holder of the Bryant Smith Chair
in Law at The University of Texas School Of Law, died on
February 26, 2005, at the age of 65. This inspiring, beloved,
and transformative teacher and scholar passed away at his
home in Fentress, Texas, surrounded by family, colleagues,
friends, and neighbors who had supported him during a long
and gallant fight with cancer over many years. His wife Jan,
and daughters Katherine Irene and Julie Ann, of Austin, and
an older brother, William, of Mesa, Arizona, survive him.
Bob’s untimely death evoked many spontaneous expressions
of grief from staff, students, and faculty. One colleague, Guy
Wellborn, gave eloquent expression to the community’s
feelings:
He was a man; take him for all in all, I shall not look upon
his like again.
Hamlet’s words about his father keep returning in my thoughts as I weep today.
Even though Bob was only a few years my senior, my love, admiration, and
profound respect for him were always, and remain, like those of a son for a father
who also happened to be a great man. I know there are many others who feel the
same way. As Bill [Powers] puts it so well, he was the consummate, complete law
professor. No one in our profession as far as I know, has been his equal when
you add up the whole package. He did it all, so well, so much, so long. Nothing
we do as an institution to honor him can ever really match the contributions
Bob made to us, the profession, to the state, to his thousands of fortunate students.
But it is important that we memorialize Bob as best we can. He was simply
the best and we must say so...
I. The Early Years
Bob Dawson was born in St. Louis in 1939, but when he was nine his parents moved him to a farm partly-owned by his mother and located near Vandalia, a small farming town in Northwestern Missouri. Bob was quite open regarding his resentment as a child about being taken from the bright lights of the big city to the rural life which, at that time, held no delights for him. He reflected on the profound changes in his values so that in his later years he was devoted to life on the horse farm he shared with Jan near Fentress despite the lengthy daily commute to Austin. He now found enormous satisfaction in the challenges of farm maintenance and the rewards of close rural friendships and their accompanying interdependence.
But as a young man, Bob eagerly left the farm for college at the University of Missouri-Columbia where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1960. He then attended law school at Washington University in St. Louis where he caught the attention of his first year criminal law teacher who asked him to help with research. This request resulted in a long association which moved him to shift his career goals from becoming a criminal defense lawyer to becoming a law teacher.
He earned an L.L.B from Washington in 1963, where he graduated as a member of the Order of the Coif. He then pursued graduate work at the University of Wisconsin and earned a S.J.D. in 1969. He served as an assistant and then associate professor of law at Washington University from 1964-67.
II. The Years at Texas.
A. Transforming the Curriculum
Bob came to UT in 1967 as a
visitor. The law school’s great
dean, Page Keeton, was engaged in a major criminal law reform
effort, a multi-year project of the State Bar of Texas to update
the law which culminated in the enactment of the Texas Penal Code
in 1973. With Page Keeton’s famous eye for talent, Bob’s
visit quickly became a permanent appointment as professor in 1968
followed by service as a reporter on the Penal Code Revision Project
from 1969-1973. Significantly, he also served during that same
period as the Academic Advisor to the Texas Family Code Project.
In 1969 the law school received a large Ford Foundation grant
which was dedicated to the improvement of the teaching of criminal
law. Page, much impressed by Bob, asked him to take the lead in
designing how best to use the Ford grant. Bob did so and what
emerged was The University of Texas Criminal Justice Project which
operated for eleven years and which Bob directed for about half
of its existence. The project was among the most innovative law
school learning experiences ever devised. Students spent a full
year in the project. The year began with a spring seminar devoted
to doing research on legal doctrines and theories of criminal
law and administration. This was followed by a modestly paid summer
internship with some component of the criminal justice system
located throughout the nation although mainly in Texas. During
the summer, the students conducted empirical research on an aspect
of their offices’ operations. Members of the criminal law
faculty supervised this research through written weekly exchanges
of correspondence and one or two personal visits to the interns.
Many of these visits were made by Bob at the helm of a small plane,
having recently been licensed as a pilot. In the fall, the student
would complete a major paper based on the summer research. With
his design and direction of the Criminal Justice Project, Bob
emerged as a pioneer in recognizing the value of empirical work
and its use as an educational tool. Before the grant was exhausted,
many faculty participated as supervisors and scores of students
served as interns, and it was generally thought an exceptionally
rewarding experience for all involved. Bob deserved the lion’s
share of the credit. But, in an environment in which
prima
donnas are not unknown, Bob, true to his character, did not
seek nor need public recognition for this exceptional achievement.
Bob was the earliest clinician among our tenured faculty. Having
never practiced law, he sought and received a year’s leave
in 1972–73, which he spent as a staff attorney with the
Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia to learn
the skills of a trial lawyer. On his return, he created The University
of Texas Criminal Defense Clinic, in 1974, which he directed until
1998. That clinic has been the model for a dozen of other clinics
that followed, and Bob was undoubtedly the crucial figure in the
transformation of our curriculum by encouraging, inspiring, and
training a host of other clinicians to prepare students for the
challenges of representing real clients facing real legal problems.
The Criminal Defense Clinic which he then created remains our
premier clinical offering, as measured by student demand for admission.
His curricular innovations continued until almost the very end
of his life. After finally leaving as director of the Criminal
Defense Clinic, he, together with two long-time clinical colleagues,
William P. Allison and David A. Sheppard, founded the Texas Center
for Actual Innocence. In addition, they created the Actual Innocence
Clinic to give students, under faculty supervision, the opportunity
to establish that carefully selected clients had, in fact, been
wrongly convicted. The very day of Bob’s passing, one of
our largest law student organizations, Texas Law Fellowships,
formally named Bob, along with his co-instructors and their students,
as recipients of its 2005 Public Interest Award for the groundbreaking
work done by the center and clinic. Bob knew of this honor, but
again his pleasure came from the enormous improvement in the education
available to our students rather than any accolades directed at
his giant contributions to this end.
B. Service to the State
Of
all of Bob’s exceptional contributions as a member of our
faculty, the most distinctive was the role he played for almost
three decades in the development of one of our nation’s most
advanced and respected systems of juvenile justice. Although the
law faculty has been justly-proud of the contributions of many faculty
to the ongoing processes of improving the substantive and procedural
laws of the state and nation, Bob’s decisive impact on the
design and substance of the Texas Juvenile Justice Code was unique.
His interest in this area began early in his career, and his expertise
had already been recognized by his appointment in 1971 as reporter
for the ABA-IJA Juvenile Justice Standards Project, Volume on Adjudication;
he retained this position until 1977. He was the principal draftsman
of Title 3 of the Texas Family Code (delinquent children and children
in need of supervision) which was enacted in 1973 and was the first
codification of juvenile law in Texas. This was followed by his
serving as the major draftsman of juvenile legislation enacted in
1987, 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2001. The most significant of all of
these efforts was the 1995 Juvenile Justice Code revision. Bob was
able to achieve enormous improvements in the law because of a close
working relationship with Representative Toby Goodman of Arlington
who, as chair of the House Committee, authored the bill that was
enacted in partial response to the public outcry over a flood of
juvenile crime. With regard to Bob’s contributions to the
juvenile justice system, Representative Goodman has said;
He is probably the single most important factor in the lives
of children in Texas. The Juvenile Code…is patterned across
the nation. This created a comprehensive juvenile system addressing
causes and prevention, not just punishment.
He’s the mastermind. Any legislation I carried, he wrote.
The good Lord only knows how many kids he saved.
Bob not only drafted the legislation and worked with Representative
Goodman on the floor of the House in evaluating proposed amendments,
he was tireless in publicizing the significance of new legislation
and explicating its meaning to those who actually had to operate
the juvenile justice system. He served as editor of the State
Bar of Texas Juvenile Law Newsletter from 1987 to his death; spoke
at innumerable meetings of judges, probation officers, members
of the Youth Commission, prosecutors, and defense attorneys; and
tirelessly responded to questions by phone, e-mail, and personal
visits from those seeking learned explanations. The extraordinary
appreciation with which Bob’s efforts were received was
demonstrated in many ways since his death. The Juvenile Justice
Law Section of the State Bar has named its annual conference the
Robert O. Dawson Juvenile Law Institute. The Texas House and Senate
passed resolutions in his memory. However the most significant
and moving tribute was the role played by the Texas Juvenile Probation
Commission in the preparation for and participation in his memorial
service on April 2, 2005, when hundreds of members of that community
attended to pay their last respects to a trusted friend and servant.
C. Scholar and Teacher
Bob was an enormously productive scholar whose work reflected
his empirical bent, his great care, and his capacity for creative
synthesis. He published the first of his many law review articles
in 1964, when he and his former criminal law teacher, Frank Miller,
authored a paper on the role of preliminary examination in criminal
procedure. This article was based on Bob’s work with the
American Bar Foundation’s ambitious empirical study of the
actual functioning of the criminal justice system. In 1969, he
published his first book,
Sentencing: The Decision as to Type,
Length, and Conditions of Sentence, which presented and analyzed
the study’s research material on criminal sentencing.
In 1971, Bob and three coauthors published an innovative course
book,
Criminal Justice Administration and Related Processes.
These materials were also published in several smaller units dealing
specifically with the following topics: police investigation,
criminal trial, mental health system, and juvenile court law.
The core material of this first course book was revised periodically
for six subsequent editions, the last published in 2000.
Bob compiled teaching materials for a new course in Texas Criminal
Procedure. With his colleague, George Dix, he published these
materials in 1984 as a course book. His initial course developed
into two courses on the subject, which are still taught using
updated versions of the materials he originally compiled. In addition,
Bob and George Dix published a four-volume text,
Texas Criminal
Practice and Procedure that dealt comprehensively with Texas
criminal procedure law. This was succeeded by a second six-volume
edition in 2001. Both editions were updated yearly by extensive
supplements.
His devotion to the juvenile justice system, and Texas juvenile
law in particular, was reflected in his book,
Texas Juvenile
Law. The first edition was published in 1984, and Bob revised
it periodically until the sixth edition in 2004.
Throughout his career, Bob published a variety of articles in
many law reviews, including the
Yale Law Journal, the
Michigan
Law Review, the
Texas Law Review, the
Wisconsin
Law Review, the
Washington University Law Quarterly,
the
Houston Law Review, the
Texas Tech Law Review,
and
St. Mary’s Law Journal.
Relatively late in life, inspired by the special interests of
his wife, Jan, a noted equestrienne and trainer and a 1988 graduate
of the law school, he developed together with her, a national
expertise in equine law. Their much-consulted Web site is hosted
by the Tarlton Law Library.
Bob was a devoted teacher who commanded both the respect and
affection of his students. He continued to meet his class despite
the awful toll his disease took of him almost to the very end.
During those final months, he told friends, “I have cancer
23 hours a day but not the hour that I am teaching.” He
was a demanding teacher in the best traditions of the Socratic
Method, but he was always concerned about communicating to each
of his students his own deep commitment to the law and to the
importance of its role as the crucial bulwark of the freedoms
which help to define our society and nation.
III. Final Reflections on the Man and Colleague
Bob fulfilled every task set for our faculty more completely
than any other colleague we have had the privilege to know. But
there is something very special about his career that must be
stressed. The University asserts that its core purpose is “to
transform lives for the benefit of society.” Bob’s
career embodied that goal through thirty seven years of unbroken
creativity. He was crucial to the transformation of our curriculum
and to the transformation of the juvenile justice system of our
state. And, he did this all with such grace, and good humor, and
a happy willingness to share credit with all those who also labored
at the oars.
Bob
lived so fully, achieved so greatly, and fulfilled all that was
asked of him. In the end, those of us who were with him during the
last years were awed by his courage throughout. His parting became
him as much as his life had. He was a model to us all, but it was
for much more than his courage; it was the zest with which he seized
and used the days remaining.
