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30 January 1998
Chapter 1 is published as four files; use the following links to go to any part of the chapter.
Mission of the School of Law
Statement on Equal Educational Opportunity
Facilities
The Joseph D. Jamail Center for Legal Research
Other Libraries
The Curriculum
Constitutional Law
Corporate Law
Environmental Law
Intellectual Property Law
International and Comparative Law
Jurisprudence, Philosophy, and Social/Political Theory
Labor and Employment Law
Trial Advocacy
Clinical Education Programs
The University of Texas Law School Foundation
The University of Texas Law Alumni Association
Endowments
Financial Assistance
Law School Emergency Loans
Law School Scholarships
Loan Funds and Endowed Scholarships
Career Services
Law School Publications
Texas Law Review
Texas International Law Journal
American Journal of Criminal Law
The Review of Litigation
Texas Environmental Law Journal
Texas Journal of Women and the Law
Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal
Texas Hispanic Journal of Law and Policy
Texas Forum on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
Student Activities
Student Bar Association
Asian Law Students Association
Assault and Flattery
Board of Advocates
Chicano/Hispanic Law Students Association
Christian Legal Society
Environmental Law Society
Guanajuato Exchange Program
Intellectual Property Law Society
International Law Society
Jewish Law Students Association
Legal Research Board
Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Law Students Association
National Lawyers Guild
Project Info
The Roundtable
Student Recruitment and Orientation Committee
Thurgood Marshall Legal Society
The School of Law is a member of the Association of American Law Schools and is approved by the American Bar Association.
Mission of the School of Law
The primary function of a law school is to educate students for the learned profession of law. Consequently, it is the first aim of the administration to provide full-time legal educators as inspiring classroom teachers who are capable of training students in the process of legal analysis, clear and persuasive oral and written advocacy, and thoughtful participation in law reform and the formation of public policy. The School of Law is also concerned with two other functions: the advancement of knowledge about the law as a social institution and about the way the rule of law may most effectively serve social ends--a research function; and keeping the busy judge and practitioner abreast of new developments--a continuing legal education function. The research and continuing legal education functions, in turn, enrich the training and education of current students.
With an enrollment of about fifteen hundred students, the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the nation's largest law schools with day students only. The students are predominantly Texas residents; nonresident admission has been limited by the state Legislature to 20 percent of each entering class. The academic credentials of enrolled nonresidents are about the same as those of residents, but nonresident tuition is higher. The school is a national school in that the training received and the courses offered provide the necessary legal education for practice in any part of the United States where the legal heritage is the common law system of England. Hundreds of out-of-state law firms, corporations, and agencies actively recruit the school's graduates each year. There are more than seventeen thousand living alumni of the School of Law.
Statement on Equal Educational Opportunity
To the extent provided by applicable law, no person shall be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under, any program or activity sponsored or conducted by The University of Texas System or any of its component institutions on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, veteran status, or disability.
Facilities
The School of Law, then the Department of Law, opened along with the Department of Literature, Science, and Arts in 1883. The two departments occupied one building until the session of 1908-1909, when the Law Building was completed. This building served the needs of the School of Law until the completion in 1953 of Townes Hall, named for Judge John Charles Townes, dean of the school from 1907 through 1923. The enrollment, about six hundred in 1953, increased each year thereafter, necessitating additions to Townes Hall in 1964 and 1980. The 1980 addition is named Jesse H. Jones Hall in honor of the Houston philanthropist. These two connected buildings house the Joseph D. Jamail Center for Legal Research and classrooms, offices, and support facilities for the faculty, staff, and students of the School of Law.
The School of Law now occupies some of the best physical facilities among United States law schools. In addition, the John B. Connally Center for the Administration of Justice is expected to open in fall 1999. The Connally Center will house a working courtroom and some of the finest facilities in the country for clinical education and advocacy skills training.
The Joseph D. Jamail Center for Legal Research
The Joseph D. Jamail Center for Legal Research houses the Tarlton Law Library and other research facilities at the School of Law. The center supports the research and academic needs of the faculty and students, as well as the research needs of the University community and the public. Members of the public, including attorneys, may purchase a courtesy borrower card that allows them to use circulating materials outside the library. Students, faculty members, and staff members at participating university libraries in Texas have access to the law library's resources through the TexShare library resource sharing program.
With more than 925,000 volumes, the Tarlton library is the fifth largest academic law library in the country. In addition to a comprehensive collection of primary and secondary legal materials, the library has a broad interdisciplinary collection in the social sciences and humanities as well as a number of special collections. Special collections include extensive foreign and international legal resources, more than 750,000 microform items in the media collection, the papers of former Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark of Texas, and a collection of recent winners of the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. The library has been a selective depository for United States government documents since 1965 and a full depository for the European Union since 1963.
In addition to printed matter, the library offers law students access to LEXIS and WESTLAW, the major online legal research services, and a variety of other legal and nonlegal electronic databases and information services. The library's Computer Learning Center provides a network of about one hundred Macintosh and IBM-compatible personal computers for word processing and research. The library also maintains a World Wide Web site at http://www.law.utexas.edu/. Through this site, students, faculty members, the University community, the public, and alumni have access to a wide range of Internet legal resources.
As a member of the Research Libraries Group, the library participates in the ShaRes Program, a consortium facilitating resource sharing among member libraries, and contributes cataloging data to the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN), a national computer system for shared cataloging. Through this network, the library has immediate access to the collections of other major research libraries throughout the country. The library's online public access catalog, TALLONS, provides immediate access to much of the library's own collection. Off-site access to the catalog is available through Telnet and World Wide Web interfaces. TALLONS can be used in conjunction with UTCAT, the online catalog of the University's General Libraries.
Contributing to the library's ambiance is the Elton M. Hyder Jr. and Martha Rowan Hyder Collection, consisting of nearly four thousand prints, paintings, manuscript documents, pieces of furniture, quilts, rugs, and other materials. It illustrates the history of law and creates a unique and culturally enriching study and work environment for library users and staff members.
Because legal research can be technically demanding, members of the library's public services staff provide individual and classroom instruction in the use of the library's materials.
Other Libraries
Students in the School of Law also have access to the resources of the University's General Libraries and Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center; these and the Tarlton Law Library constitute one of the largest academic libraries in the United States. The University library serves as a depository for publications of the United Nations and of the British and Canadian governments. Located across the street from the law school are the Center for American History, the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, and the Edie and Lew Wasserman Public Affairs Library. The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum is also located on the University campus. The Texas State Library, the State Law Library, and the Legislative Reference Library, all located in the state capitol complex, are open to law students.
The Curriculum
The breadth and depth of the curriculum is conveyed by the list of courses given in chapter 5. The following areas of the curriculum are of particular importance.
Constitutional Law
Often considered to have the best constitutional law faculty in the United States, the School of Law presents unparalleled opportunities for work on the range of issues that fall under constitutional law: the structure of government and the federal system, individual rights and liberties, and constitutional interpretation. Faculty members approach these issues from traditional doctrinal perspectives as well as from the perspectives of political science, philosophy, and history. Even lawyers who do not practice constitutional law will find that a knowledge of constitutional doctrine is invaluable, since it is the most visible--and often the most controversial--area of the law, one which lawyers are often called upon to explain to their peers outside the profession.
Corporate Law
People trained in corporate law help to create, finance, and operate the business enterprises that account for the bulk of the world's economic activity. They bring corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, and other enterprises into being. They structure the stock and bond offerings and the bank and insurance company loans that provide the enterprises with capital. They effect the joint ventures, licensing arrangements, mergers, acquisitions, and other transactions entered into by the enterprises. They do this work within constraints arising from market forces, varying notions of social responsibility, and state, federal, and international law and regulation. Corporate work is challenging and rewarding.
The School of Law offers excellent opportunities for students interested in corporate work. Few institutions can offer a combination of courses, faculty, and extracurricular opportunities so well suited to the field.
Environmental Law
The increasing number and complexity of international, federal, state, and local environmental laws afford legal practitioners challenging career opportunities. Practice in environmental law exposes an attorney to several legal disciplines, including contract, tort, property, constitutional, and administrative law. In addition, an environmental lawyer can fill an important role in helping to bridge the gap between technological and scientific advancements and complex political considerations. The School of Law offers exceptional opportunities for students interested in environmental law through its courses, journals, and extracurricular activities.
Intellectual Property Law
The School of Law provides an environment especially suited to the study of intellectual property law. A variety of courses in patent and trademark practice, entertainment and copyright law, and high technology are taught by full-time faculty members; these core courses are supplemented by others taught by leading intellectual property practitioners from throughout the state. The curriculum in intellectual property is enhanced by strong extracurricular programs and by a high level of interest in the field outside the law school, both at the University and in Austin's business and artistic communities.
International and Comparative Law
The law school has become a leading center for the teaching and study of international and comparative law. The school's size and its commitment to this growing area of law have yielded a wealth of course offerings and an increasingly broad and diverse faculty.
Jurisprudence, Philosophy, and Social/Political Theory
An integral part of the law school's mission is to equip students to think analytically and critically about the intellectual and moral issues that underlie the law and the legal system. Debates in the political arena about the proper role of judges in interpreting the Constitution typically presuppose answers to classic jurisprudential questions; decisions about the proper scope of regulatory schemes often depend on philosophical views about social justice and equality; arguments among judges and legal academics about statutory interpretation often engage theoretical issues about the nature of language and meaning. For students contemplating a career in law teaching, issues in jurisprudence, philosophy, and social/political theory are an increasingly important part of academic preparation. But for all students, law school can provide an opportunity for sustained reflection on perennial ethical and political questions--questions that are vital to the student because of the power lawyers have to answer them in practice.
Labor and Employment Law
Traditionally, courses in labor law have been concerned with the federal law governing the relationship between labor, represented by a union, and management. Recent decades have seen the rise of the new field of employment law, spurred by the development of a broad array of statutory and common-law constraints on the workplace and the individual employment contract. The combined field of labor and employment law has become an increasingly rich and diverse area of legal practice. The field also affords a window on many of the most important legal developments of the late twentieth century: the tension among market forces, individual rights, and legal regulation; the expansion of the antidiscrimination mandate and the challenge of diversity; the explosion of litigation and the development of alternative modes of dispute resolution; the decline of unions and collective bargaining and the rise of alternative forms of employee involvement and representation. The law school faculty has one of the strongest labor and employment contingents in the nation.
Trial Advocacy
The law school is a nationally recognized and award-winning center of training in trial advocacy. The school's fine physical facilities for the teaching of advocacy and dispute resolution will be dramatically enhanced by the addition of the John B. Connally Center for the Administration of Justice, which will house a large, fully functional courtroom--with judicial chambers, jury deliberation rooms, and attorney conference rooms--and a number of teaching courtrooms. The completion of this building, expected in fall 1999, will give the law school perhaps the best facility for the teaching of advocacy in the United States.
Table of Contents
Chapter 2 - Admission
Chapter 3 - Academic Policies and Procedures
Chapter 4 - Degrees
Chapter 5 - Courses
Chapter 6 - The Faculty
Appendix - Endowments