Editing University of Texas School of Law

{{Infobox Law School
| nickname                    = 
| image                       = 
| motto                       = 
| parent                      = University of Texas at Austin
| established                 = 1883
| type                        = Public
| endowment                   = 
| dean                        = 
| street_address              = 727 E Dean Keeton St
| city                        = Austin
| state                       = TX
| country                     = US
| full_time_students          = 1154
| part_time_students          = 
| full_time_faculty           = 89
| adjunct_faculty             = 74
| ranking                     = 
| tier                        = 
| bar_pass_rate               = 93
| lsat_75_percentile          = 169
| median_lsat                 = 167
| lsat_25_percentile          = 164
| gpa_75_percentile           = 3.84
| median_gpa                  = 3.71
| gpa_25_percentile           = 3.57
| underemployment_score       = 
| library                     = 
| subsidized_annual_tuition   = 28,669
| unsubsidized_annual_tuition = 44,638
| tuition_subsidy_basis       = State residency
| website                     = www.utexas.edu/law/
| aba_profile                 = https://officialguide.lsac.org/Release/SchoolsABAData/SchoolPage/SchoolPage.aspx?sid=148
}}

'''The University of Texas School of Law''', also known as '''UT Law''', is an [[American Bar Association|ABA]]-certified [[United States|American]] [[law school]] located on the [[University of Texas at Austin]] campus. The law school has been in operation since the founding of the University in 1883. It was one of only two schools at the University when it was founded; the other was the [[liberal arts]] school. The school offers both [[Juris Doctor]] and [[Master of Laws]] degrees.<ref name=about>{{cite web|url = http://www.utexas.edu/law/about/history.html | title = History of the Law School | work=The University of Texas School of Law | accessdate = 5 February 2011}}</ref> It also offers dual degree programs with the [[Juris Doctor|JD]], such as an [[MBA]], [[MPA]], and [[PhD]].<ref name=quickfacts>{{cite web|url = http://www.utexas.edu/law/depts/admissions/application/quickfacts.html | title = Quick Facts | work=University of Texas School of Law | accessdate = 5 February 2011}}</ref>

The law school is consistently ranked among the top twenty law schools in the [[United States]] and has a reputation<ref name=about /> for turning out graduates who become high-profile lawyers and public servants. The school is ranked #14 in the nation by ''[[U.S. News & World Report]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url = http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/rankings | title = Best Law Schools Ranking | work=[[US News & World Report]] | accessdate = 5 February 2011}}</ref>

The school has 19,000 living alumni, over 4,000 of whom practice law outside of Texas.<ref name=about />

==Admissions==
UT Law is among the most selective law schools in the nation. For the class of 2010, 5,815 students applied and 24% were accepted with a class median [[Law School Admission Test|LSAT]] score of 167. Although the minimum GPA to apply is 2.2, the median GPA for the admitted class is 3.71. The average age of admitted students is 24, and women make up 46% of the class. UT Law admits students from over 30 US states.<ref name=quickfacts /><ref>{{cite web|url = http://www.utexas.edu/law/admissions/application/index.html | title = Admissions | work=University of Texas School of Law | accessdate = 5 February 2011}}</ref>  The youngest member of the 1L class of 2013 was nineteen year old Gordon M. Griffin, a civil engineering graduate who started UT at the age of 15.

Emphasizing its role as a public institution, UT Law reserves 65% of the seats in each first-year class for Texas residents.

==History==
The University of Texas School of Law was founded in 1883.<ref name=about /> In 1914, the school created its first course on oil and gas law, and in 1941 a legal aid clinic was started.<ref name=about />

Prior to the [[US Civil Rights Movement]], the school was limited to white students, but the school's admissions policies were challenged from two different directions in high-profile 20th century federal court cases that were important to the long struggle over segregation, integration, and diversity in American education.  

===''Sweatt v. Painter'' (1950)===
[[File:University_of_Texas_Law_Building_postcard_(1908–1924).jpg|thumb|Illustration of the Law Building on a postcard (1908-1924). ]]
The school was sued in the civil rights case of ''[[Sweatt v. Painter]]'' (1950).  The case involved [[Heman Marion Sweatt]], a black man who was refused admission to the School of Law on the grounds that substantially equivalent facilities (meeting the requirements of ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'') were offered by the state's law school for blacks. When the plaintiff first applied to the University of Texas, there was no law school in Texas which admitted blacks.  Instead of granting the plaintiff a [[writ]] of [[mandamus]], the Texas trial court "[[Continuance|continued]]" the case for six months to allow the state time to create a law school for blacks, which it developed in Houston.

The [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] reversed the lower court decision, saying that the separate school failed to offer Sweatt an equal legal education.  The Court noted that the University of Texas School of Law had 16 full-time and three part-time [[professor]]s, 850 [[student]]s and a [[law library]] of 65,000 [[Volume (publishing)|volumes]], while the separate school the state set up for blacks had five full-time professors, 23 students and a library of 16,500 volumes.  But the Court held that even "more important" than these quantitative differences were differences such as "reputation of the faculty, experience of the administration, position and influence of the alumni, standing in the community, traditions and prestige."  Because the separate school could not provide an "equal" education, the Court ordered that Hemann Sweatt be admitted to University of Texas School of Law.

''Sweatt v. Painter'' was the first major [[test case]] in the long-term litigation strategy of [[Thurgood Marshall]] and the [[NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund|NAACP Legal Defense Fund]] that led to the landmark Supreme Court decision in the case of ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' in 1954.<ref>Julius L. Chambers, "A Tribute to Justice Thurgood Marshall," Stanford Law Review, Vol. 44, Summer, 1992, p. 1249</ref>  Marshall and the NAACP correctly calculated that they could dismantle segregation by building up a series of precedents, beginning at UT Law School, before moving on to the more explosive question of racial integration in elementary schools.

===''Hopwood v. Texas'' (1996)===
In 1992, [[plaintiff]] Cheryl Hopwood, a [[White American]] woman, sued the School of Law on the grounds that she had not been admitted even though her grades and test scores were better than those of some minority candidates who were admitted pursuant to an [[affirmative action]] program.  ''[[Texas Monthly]]'' editor Paul Burka later described Hopwood as "the perfect plaintiff to question the fairness of reverse discrimination" because of her academic credentials and personal hardships which she had endured (including a young daughter suffering from a muscular disease).<ref>Burka, Paul. "Law - Cheryl Hopwood." ''[[Texas Monthly]]'' (Sept. 1996)</ref>

She won her case, [[Hopwood v. Texas]], in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the school "may not use race as a factor in deciding which applicants to admit in order to achieve a diverse student body, to combat the perceived effects of a hostile environment at the law school, to alleviate the law school's poor reputation in the minority community, or to eliminate any present effects of past discrimination by actors other than the law school."<ref>Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996)</ref>  The case did not reach the Supreme Court.

However, the Supreme Court ruled in ''[[Grutter v. Bollinger]]'' (2003), a case involving the [[University of Michigan]], that the [[United States Constitution]] "does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." This effectively reversed the decision of ''Hopwood v. Texas''.<ref>See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (stating that the Supreme Court's purpose in deciding Grutter's case was "to resolve the disagreement among the Courts of Appeals on a question of national importance: Whether diversity is a compelling interest that can justify the narrowly tailored use of race in selecting applicants for admission to public universities. Compare Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (CA5 1996) (holding that diversity is not a compelling state interest) with [another case] holding that it is."</ref>

==Publications==

Students at the University of Texas School of Law publish twelve law journals.

* [http://www.utexas.edu/law/journals/ajcl/ American Journal of Criminal Law]
* [http://www.texenrls.org/publications_journal.cfm Texas Environmental Law Journal]
* [http://www.THJLP.org Texas Hispanic Journal of Law and Policy]
* [http://www.utexas.edu/law/journals/tiplj/ Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal]
* [http://www.tilj.org/ Texas International Law Journal]
* [http://www.tjogel.org Texas Journal of Oil, Gas & Energy Law]
* [http://www.tjwl.org Texas Journal of Women and the Law]
* [[Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights]] [http://www.utexas.edu/law/journals/tjclcr/]
* [[Texas Law Review]] [http://www.texaslrev.com/about]
* [http://www.tresl.net Texas Review of Entertainment and Sports Law]
* [[Texas Review of Law and Politics]] [http://www.trolp.org/]
* [[The Review of Litigation]] [http://www.utexas.edu/law/journals/trol/]

==Notable alumni==
{{See also|List of University of Texas at Austin alumni}}
*[[Linda Addison (lawyer)|Linda L. Addison]] &mdash; Partner-in-Charge, New York, [[Fulbright & Jaworski| Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.]]
*[[William R. Archer]] &mdash; [[United States Representative]] from [[Texas]] (1971–2001)
*[[James Baker]] &mdash; former [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]]
*[[Paul Begala]] &mdash; [[political consulting|political consultant]], [[Pundit (expert)|commentator]] and former advisor to [[President of the United States|President]] [[Bill Clinton]]
*[[Lloyd Bentsen]] &mdash; former [[United States Secretary of the Treasury|Secretary of the Treasury]] and [[United States Senator]]
*[[Samuel T. Bledsoe]] &mdash; President of [[Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway]] 1933-1939<ref>{{cite book| title=Steel Trails to Santa Fe| author=Waters, Lawrence Leslie| publisher=University of Kansas Press| location=Lawrence, Kansas| year=1950| page=421 }}</ref>
*[[Robert L. Bobbitt|Robert Lee Bobbitt]] &mdash; [[Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives]] (1927-1929), [[Attorney General of Texas]] (1929-1930), state court judge (1935-1937), chairman of the [[Texas Transportation Commission|Texas Highway Department]] (1937-1943)<ref>{{cite web|url=http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bobbittfamilydna/bookeighteen/pp539-5730025.htm|title=Robert Lee Bobbitt|publisher=freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com|accessdate=October 8, 2010}}</ref>
*[[C. C. Bridgewater]] – Judge of the [[Washington Court of Appeals]], Division II
*[[J. E. "Buster" Brown]] (Class of 1972) - [[Texas Senate, District 17|Texas Senator, District 17]] from 1981 to 2002
*[[William Curtis Bryson|William C. Bryson]] &mdash; United States Circuit Judge, [[U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit|United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit]]
*[[George P. Bush]] &mdash; son of [[Governor of Florida|Florida Governor]] [[Jeb Bush]], nephew of President [[George W. Bush]]
*[[Orville Bullington]] (1882-1956, Class of 1906) &mdash; [[Wichita Falls, Texas|Wichita Falls]] lawyer; [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] [[gubernatorial]] [[nominee]] in 1932
*[[Kent Caperton]] &mdash; lawyer, lobbyist in Austin and former state senator from [[Bryan, Texas|Bryan]]
*[[Tom C. Clark]] &mdash; former [[Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States]] and [[United States Attorney General]]
*[[John Connally|John B. Connally, Jr.]] &mdash; former [[Governor of Texas]], former [[United States Secretary of the Navy|Secretary of the Navy]], former [[United States Secretary of the Treasury|Secretary of the Treasury]]
*[[Tom Connally]] &mdash; former [[United States Senator]] from Texas
*[[William C. Conner]] (1920–2009) &mdash; federal judge for the [[United States District Court for the Southern District of New York]]<ref>Martin, Douglas. [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/nyregion/20conner.html "William Conner, Judge Expert in Patent Law, Dies at 89"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', July 19, 2009. Accessed July 20, 2009</ref>
*[[Dick DeGuerin]] &mdash; prominent criminal defense attorney based in [[Houston, Texas|Houston]]
*[[Lloyd Doggett]] &mdash; member, U.S. Congress
*[[David Frederick]] &mdash; successful appellate attorney; has argued over 21 cases before the [[United States Supreme Court]]
*[[Kathryn S. Fuller]] &mdash; Chair of the [[Ford Foundation]] and former President of the [[World Wildlife Fund]]
*[[Orlando Luis Garcia]] &mdash; United States District Judge, Western District of Texas
*[[Bryan Garner]] &mdash; editor in chief of [[Black's Law Dictionary]] and author of numerous books and articles on language and writing, including "A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage"
*[[Mike Godwin]] &mdash; first attorney for the [[Electronic Frontier Foundation]] and current general counsel for the [[Wikimedia Foundation]]
*[[Leon A. Green]] &mdash; long-time [[dean (education)|dean]] at [[Northwestern University School of Law]] and professor at UT and at [[Yale Law School]]; authored pioneering works in [[tort]] law
*[[Rick Green (Texas politician)|Rick Green]] &mdash; former state representative, District 45; [[motivational speaker]]
* Timothy Hall &mdash; current President of [[Austin Peay State University]] in [[Clarksville, Tennessee]], former law professor at [[The University of Mississippi]]
*[[Grady Hazlewood]] &mdash; [[district attorney]] from [[Potter County, Texas|Potter County]], and state senator from [[Texas Senate, District 31|District 31]] in [[Amarillo, Texas|Amarillo]] (1941–1971)
*[[Hayden Wilson Head, Jr.|Hayden W. Head, Jr.]] &mdash; Chief Judge, [[United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas]]
*[[Scott Horton (lawyer)|Robert Scott Horton]] &mdash; prominent Human Rights attorney, columnist for [[Harper's]], and adjunct professor at [[Columbia Law School]]
*[[Herbert Hovenkamp]] &mdash; Professor of Law at the [[University of Iowa College of Law]]; prolific author and expert in [[Antitrust]] law; member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] 
*[[Kay Bailey Hutchison]] &mdash; [[Senior Senator|senior]] [[United States Senate|United States Senator]] from Texas
*[[Joe Jamail]] &mdash; [[billionaire]] litigator and [[philanthropist]]
*[[Andrew L. Jefferson, Jr.]] &mdash; noted Houston lawyer, former Harris County judge, former federal prosecutor and former federal judicial nominee
*[[Edith Jones]] &mdash; [[Chief Justice]] of the [[Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals]]
*[[William Wayne Justice]] &mdash; Senior United States District Judge, Western District of Texas, United States District Judge, Eastern District of Texas, storied civil rights judge
*[[George P. Kazen]] &mdash; Senior United States District Judge, Southern District of Texas;
*[[W. Page Keeton]] &mdash; 1931 graduate and Dean from 1949 to 1974; expert in Torts
*[[Ron Kirk]] &mdash; former [[list of mayors of Dallas, Texas|mayor]] of [[Dallas, Texas]] 
*[[Cyndi Taylor Krier]] (Class of 1975) &mdash; former state senator and county judge from San Antonio
*[[Debra Lehrmann]] &mdash; former 360th District Court Judge in Fort Worth; [[Texas Supreme Court]] Justice (2011-  )
*[[William S. Lott]] &mdash; retired Texas state Judge
*[[Oliver Luck]] &mdash; former [[National Football League|NFL]] player; former executive with [[NFL Europa]] and the [[Houston Dynamo]] of [[Major League Soccer]]; current athletic director at [[West Virginia Mountaineers|West Virginia University]]
*[[Earle Bradford Mayfield]] &mdash; former [[United States Senator]] from Texas
*[[Walter Mengden]] &mdash; 1954 graduate; former member of both houses of the Texas Legislature from Harris County
*[[Thomas Mengler]] &mdash; dean of the law school at [[University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)]]; former dean at the [[University of Illinois College of Law]]
*[[William T. Moore (Texas politician)|William T. "Bill" Moore]] &mdash; 1949 graduate; state senator from [[Bryan, Texas|Bryan]] known as the "Bull of the Brazos" and the "father of the modern Texas A&M University"
*[[Steve Munisteri]] &mdash; retired Houston attorney and chairman since June 12, 2010, of the [[Republican Party of Texas]]
*[[Gene Nichol]] &mdash; law professor at the [[University of North Carolina]]; former professor and President of the [[College of William and Mary]]; former dean of the law schools at [[University of North Carolina School of Law|North Carolina]] and [[University of Colorado School of Law|Colorado]]
*[[Federico Peña]] &mdash; former [[United States Secretary of Transportation|Secretary of Transportation]] and [[United States Secretary of Energy|Secretary of Energy]]
*[[Alfred P.C. Petsch|Colonel Alfred P.C. Petsch]] (1887-1981) &mdash; Lawyer, legislator, civic leader, philanthropist, member of [[Texas House of Representatives]] 1925-1941
*[[Sam Rayburn]]  &mdash; longest-serving [[Speaker of the United States House of Representatives]] and [[United States Representative]] from Texas
*[[A.R. "Babe" Schwartz]] &mdash; former Texas State Senator, helped author the landmark [[Texas Open Beaches Act]]
*[[Robert Schwarz Strauss]] &mdash; former [[list of United States Ambassadors to Russia|United States Ambassador to Russia]]
*[[Kristen Silverberg]] &mdash; [[Ambassadors of the United States|U.S. Ambassador]] to the [[European Union]]
*[[Morris Sheppard]] &mdash; former [[United States Senator]] from Texas
*[[Max Sherman]] (Class of 1960) &mdash; former state senator and former president of [[West Texas A&M University]]
*[[Ray Thornton]] &mdash; former [[United States Representative]] from Arkansas and [[Arkansas Supreme Court]] justice
*[[Sarah Weddington]] &mdash; represented [[Norma McCorvey|Jane Roe]] in the landmark Supreme Court case ''[[Roe v. Wade]]''
*[[Bill White (politician)|Bill White]] &mdash; former Mayor of the [[City of Houston]]
*[[Harry Whittington]] &mdash; [[Texas]] [[Lawyer|attorney]] famous for getting shot by [[Dick Cheney]] in a hunting incident; professionally known for [[eminent domain]] cases
*[[Diane Pamela Wood]] &mdash; Judge for the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit]], considered potential candidate for a [[Barack Obama Supreme Court candidates|seat on the Supreme Court]] during the Obama administration
*[[Ralph Yarborough]] &mdash; former [[United States Senator]] from Texas
*[[John Andrew Young]] &mdash; former [[United States Representative]] from Texas

==References==
<references />

==External links==
*[http://www.utexas.edu/law/ The University of Texas School of Law]

[[Category:Law Schools]]