A panel on sports, media, and race moderated by the renowned legal scholar and commentator Arthur Miller will take place at the LBJ Library Auditorium on Thursday, November 11, 2010, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The panel is dedicated to the late Charles Alan Wright (1927–2000), a longtime faculty member at the University of Texas School of Law. The panel is free and open to the public.
Wright and Miller collaborated on the definitive legal treatise Federal Practice and Procedure. But in addition to being the foremost authority in the United States on constitutional law and federal procedure, Wright was also an avid sports enthusiast.
“Charlie was deeply involved in the University of Texas sports scene,” said Miller, a New York University law professor and former law professor at Harvard University. “He would never miss a game. He just loved sports.” Miller recalled that he became aware of “Charlie’s insane sports affinity” in 1964 when they were working together on their treatise in Dallas on the weekend of the Texas-OU football game .
Dedicating this event in Wright’s name is “a wonderful way to remember Charlie,” Miller said. “It struck me that this was a good thing to do especially because it brought together elements of the law school and this new program that Mike Cramer is directing.” (Michael Cramer is the director of one of the sponsors of the event, the newly formed Texas Program in Sports and Media at UT’s College of Communication.)
Wright accepted a professorship at the Law School in 1955, and taught Federal Courts, Constitutional Law, and a seminar on the Supreme Court. During the course of his career, Wright argued twelve cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning ten. His achievements extended beyond the classroom and courtroom: Wright led the Legal Eagles, a stunningly successful intramural football team, to 330 wins during his 45-year involvement as coach and athletic director. From 1978 to 1983 he chaired the Committee on Infractions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and in 1993–1994 he was chairman of the Review Panel of the NCAA.
“Sports, Media and Race: The Impact on America” features participants with national, regional, and local perspective and resonance, including Talmage Boston, ’78, an author and baseball historian.
The Law School’s Texas Review of Entertainment and Sports Law (TRESL) plans to record the panel proceedings and publish them in an upcoming issue of its journal, said Arthur Reyna, TRESL’s editor in chief. He said UT Law Professor David Sokolow, TRESL’s faculty advisor, played a crucial role in encouraging the law students to work with Cramer and the Texas Program in Sports and Media on this project.
“This unique connection between the Law School and the Texas Program in Sports and Media is something that we hope to build on in subsequent years,” Reyna said. He noted that Cramer, a former president of the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Stars and a former professor in sports management at New York University, is also working with TRESL on aspects of its Spring symposium, “The Role of Agents in Entertainment and Sports Law.”
In addition to the Texas Program in Sports and Media, the event is being sponsored by the College of Communication and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. For more information about the event log on to the Texas Program in Sports and Media website.
Contact: Laura Castro, UT Law Communications, 512-232-1229, lcastro@law.utexas.edu.