The Transformative Years of the University of Alabama Law School, 1966–1970. Daniel Meador

that the new president was backing off from these commitments. It was difficult to understand why several of the faculty at the law school and the new president of the University of Alabama did not share Meador’s enthusiasm for the changes that had been initiated, leaving him with concerns that the improvements at the law school would not be sustained. He accepted the prestigious professorship at the University of Virginia Law School and returned to the classroom.

      Meador was wrong, however, in fearing that the improvements at the University of Alabama Law School would unravel under a different president; most of the achievements of Dean Meador and those who worked with him to fulfill his vision for the law school appear to be firmly in place, evidence of the skill and craftsmanship of those who worked to accomplish these goals. This book reveals the blueprint for the efforts that achieved so much for the law school during four short years.

Preface

      The School of Law at the University of Alabama in the early twenty-first century has its roots in the late 1960s. In that time, seeds were sown and ideas and programs implanted that have grown and developed in the decades since. Many—perhaps most—of the important features of the School as it now is can be traced to the years 1966–70. Those years mark the transition from the School of the past to the School of the future. They were transformative and represent the founding period for the modern Law School. The pages that follow present an eyewitness account of those years.

      They were heady years, exciting and frustrating, with much happening on all fronts. What was accomplished was not done easily. It is unlikely that I recall all the details—after all, it has been forty years—and I will be happy to be corrected if further research or other accounts reveal inaccuracies. In the meantime, this is how I see that time from the vantage point of four decades later.

The published sources for this account are the annual Law School catalogs,[1] the annual reports of the Law School Foundation,[2] and numerous issues of the student newspaper.[3] Additional sources are unpublished memoranda, committee reports, Dean’s annual reports, and the like.[4] Those sources are supplemented by my memory from serving through those years as the School’s dean. Indeed, my memory is the sole source for some of the facts and observations contained here.

      Time, not surprisingly, has taken its toll after more than forty years. The ranks of those who served on the faculty during my deanship have greatly thinned. The law alumni with whom I worked most closely are now all gone. The upshot is that living witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the events recounted here, and who might have assisted in my recollections, are few.

      Four who did serve on the faculty during that time and who generously undertook to read the manuscript are Wythe W. Holt Jr., Julian B. McDonnell Jr., W. Taylor Reveley III, and L. Vastine Stabler Jr. Also, Fournier J. (Boots) Gale III, a member of the Law Class of 1969, devoted time to reading the manuscript. In the years since, all in different ways have had outstanding legal careers. They made helpful comments and suggestions and refreshed my memory on some points. They helped me relive those long-ago Farrah Hall days. I am most grateful to them. However, I alone am responsible for what is said here.

      I express my appreciation to Mary Ketcham and Catherine Lamb, my office assistants, for their essential help in editing and in preparing the manuscript for publication.

1 - University of Alabama Law School Catalogues for 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970.

2 - University of Alabama Law School Foundation Reports 1967, 1968, and 1969.

3 - The Alabama Law Reporter Vol. I No. I – Vol. III No. I (1967-69).

4 - Unpublished items, or copies thereof, are in possession of the author.

1

       Background

      In the late summer of 1965, I received a telephone call from Dr. Frank Rose, president of the University of Alabama. He informed me that M. Leigh Harrison would be retiring as dean of the law school the following year. He wondered whether I would be interested in the position. This call was so surprising that I hardly knew what to say. At that time I was on the law faculty at the University of Virginia and not at all anxious to leave. Moreover, my situation was complicated in that I would shortly depart for England with my wife and three children to spend a year as a Fulbright Lecturer. Nevertheless, we agreed to meet in Washington to explore the idea.

      At the Mayflower Hotel, we had a lengthy and wide-ranging discussion about the school. What sticks most clearly in my mind is his statement that he intended “to do for the law school what I did for the medical school.” I was familiar with what had been happening at the University of Alabama Medical School in Birmingham in recent years because my brother was on the faculty there. With huge increases in funding and able, progressive leadership, that school had been brought to national recognition. So Dr. Rose’s statement carried a powerful message. If he intended to do the same for the law school, all sorts of possibilities were opened up. He held before me that exciting prospect.

      In addition, this was not an offer of just any law school deanship. The University of Alabama was my alma mater. It was home. My roots ran deep in the state, and I had an abiding concern over its future. Also, I was a member of the law school class of 1951, and the opportunity to return as dean was especially attractive. Given all that, along with Frank Rose’s commitments of support, it was probably a foregone conclusion that I would accept the position.

      My decision was influenced to an extent by what was happening at the University of Georgia Law School. In January 1964, I had been offered the deanship there. A group of its alumni from major Atlanta law firms had determined to build up their school. They were committed to raising large amounts of money to create endowed professorships, enlarge the library, and add significantly to the building. As one put it, “Harvard would become the Georgia of the North.” Governor Carl Sanders joined the effort and invited me to breakfast at the governor’s mansion to exert maximum persuasion. It was an exciting prospect. In the Deep South for the first time here was an unprecedented effort to pull the region out of its long back seat in legal education and to train a new generation of enlightened leaders. It was tempting. But in the end I turned it down, as I had no ambition to be a dean. I thought that at the University of Virginia I already had one of the finest positions in legal education. At the same time, I had a twinge of guilt over failing to answer this call from my native region. Then along came Alabama, and that was different. To have turned down the deanship there would, I thought, have been to shirk my duty to my home state. There would have been a greater, lasting sense of guilt, more than what I had felt in declining the Georgia opportunity.

      The relevance of the Georgia offer is that I thought that if an all-out effort for the state law school was being mounted in Georgia, then a similar development should be possible in Alabama. In my view, success would depend heavily on whether the Alabama law alumni could be motivated like those Atlanta lawyers to provide substantial financial support for their school—something the Alabamians were not accustomed to doing.

      Dr. Rose and I reached an understanding that I would assume the deanship the following summer. So, as had been scheduled, I spent the 1965–66 academic year on a Fulbright Lectureship in England. This proved to be both an advantage and disadvantage. It was a disadvantage in that it made it slower and more difficult to communicate with Dean Harrison and the faculty at Tuscaloosa; nevertheless we did carry on helpful