I happened to see on Yahoo Answers a question I had always wondered about myself – why are there three ducks on the seal of the University of Houston Law Center? So I did a little research. According to the Law Center website:

The Law Center seal includes three martlets above an opened text inscribed with “LEX,” the Latin word for law. Martlets, symbolizing peace and deliverance, also appear in the University of Houston seal – which in turn is drawn from the coat of arms of General Sam Houston who claimed descent from Sir Hugh of Padavan, an 11th century Norman knight.

I did a little more digging and found a more satisfying justification than symbols of “peace and deliverance” – two things you’ll find very little of in a law school. The martlets (also martelette, martinet or martin), “a byrde whose fete be so lytle, that they seeme to haue none.”¹. It became used in heraldry as a mark of cadency for a fourth son, symbolizing their position as having no footing in the ancestral lands.².

If you’ve been unfortunate enough to have a Wills and Trusts professor with an interest in primogeniture, you may recognize the English practice by which the first son inherited the estate. The second and third sons traditionally went into the Church and the Army, and the fourth had no well-defined place. As the fourth son received no part of the family wealth and had to earn his own, the martlet was also a “symbol of hard work, perseverance, and a nomadic household.”³

A number of universities have adopted the martlet – Pembroke College, Cambridge, University College, Oxford, and McGill – sometimes shown without feet, thus denoting an inability to land and symbolizing the “constant quest for knowledge and learning.”⁴

The University of Houston Law Center no doubt inherited the martlets from the University of Houston as a whole, which adopted the seal in 1938, derived from General Sam Houston’s coat of arms.

I probably could have lived a long time without ever again pondering the significance of the ducks, but I like the image – a fourth child with no claim to the estate or designated career path but creating a legacy of his or her own through hard work and perseverance, in a never-ceasing flight in pursuit of knowledge and learning.

1. Thomas Elyot, Latin Dictionary (1538)
2. Oxford English Dictionary
3. Wikipedia: Martlet; Arthur Charles Fox Davies, A Complete Guide to Heraldry, 244, 489-90 (2008)
4. Wikipedia: Martlet

The Cougars earned a spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1992 with a come-from-behind 81-73 victory against the UTEP Miners in the Conference USA tournament championship game on Saturday.

It’s a huge win for a program that’s struggled in the post-season and languished in the shadow of the Phi Slama Jama days of Hakeem Alajuwon and Clyde Drexler.

• Matt Miller, Win over UTEP sends Cougars to NCAA Tournament, Daily Cougar (March 13, 2010)
• Steve Campbell, UH heading to NCAA Tournament for first time since ’92, Houston Chronicle (March 13, 2010)
• Penders coaches fourth school to NCAA tournament, Associated Press (March 13, 2010)

If anyone has a copy of the motion I would dearly love to see it. My friend Josh Zientek points out that the orders are available in all their glory on the recently revamped Harris County District Clerk website – see The State of Texas vs. GREEN, JOHN EDWARD JR.. It’s 10 cents a page, which I might find objectionable if the Clerk, Loren Jackson, hadn’t done such an amazing job bringing that system into the 21st century.

Update:

Ah, now I get it. Mark Bennett does a typically thorough job in clarifying the situation.

Today Judge Fine denied the defendant’s Motion to Declare Death Penalty Unconstitutional Based on Texas’ Lethal Injection Protocol (Scribd) and his Motion to Declare Texas Death Penalty Statute to be Unconstitutional (Jurors’ Inability to Predict Future Dangerousness) (Scribd). The motion that Judge fine did grant was the defendant’s Motion to Hold that Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.071 is Unconstitutional: Motion to Hold that Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 37.01 is Unconstitutional.

Collected Commentary:

• Paul Kennedy, The Defense Rests, More on Judge Fine’s ruling (Mar. 5, 2010)
• Mark Bennett, Defending People, Even in Texas, Death Penalty Still Constitutional (Mar. 4, 2010)
• Brenda Sapino Jeffreys, Texas Lawyer, Houston judge declares death penalty unconstitutional (Mar. 4, 2010)
• Chris Vogel, Houston Press, Harris County Judge Declares Death Penalty Unconstitutional; We’re Guessing There Will Be An Appeal (Updated) (Mar. 4, 2010)

University of Houston Law Dean Ray Nimmer announced today that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now a partner in the New York office of Houston-based Bracewell and Giuliani, will deliver the commencement address at our law school commencement.

Although a commencement speaker doesn’t substantively add to the education you just received, it’s one of the few opportunities to celebrate your accomplishments with your family and it’s nice when it’s somebody your grandma can recognize.

Update:

Commencement speakers seem, for some reason, to have become magnets for controversy in recent years. One UHLC alum has declared herself ‘humiliated’ by the choice of Giuliani as commencement speaker, citing a litany of personal and professional failings. Now I wouldn’t nominate Mr. Giuliani for sainthood, but nor would I construe his failings – whatever they might be – as a reflection on the law school. I simply don’t think that selecting someone as a commencement speaker is an institutional ratification of everything they’ve done or said. I honestly don’t think it reflects on the institution at all. Some could fairly disagree with me on that I’m sure. I’ll be sitting in that audience, so I’m mostly hopeful that he will have something interesting and/or useful to communicate. I’ve found that people who have experienced failure often have more interesting and useful things to say than those who haven’t. I remain enthused.

So what should be the criteria of a commencement speaker? As I stated above, recognition by my grandmother is necessary but not entirely sufficient criteria. For a law school I would suggest a commencement speaker be (a) recognized for their career as an attorney, (b) distinguished for leadership and service in government and/or community, with (c) something valuable or useful to say to a group of graduating law students and their families. Giuliani clerked for a federal judge, served as Associate Attorney General in the Justice Dept. and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mayor of New York City and a Presidential candidate. His legal and political career is as active and varied as they come. Will he have something valuable to say? We’ll see.

It also got me wondering what other schools have lined up for commencement day. It’s not entirely clear which law schools have separate ceremonies as they are with us, but here’s what I could track down:

• Michigan: President Obama (A sitting President, OK, so that’s impressive, though I’m sure the birthers will have a lot to say about that one.)
• Harvard: Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter
• Yale Class Day: Former President Bill Clinton (yeah, no personal failings there)
• Seton Hall Law: Chris Christie
• Penn Law: CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin (referred to on Above the Law as the Tiger Woods of journalism)
• William & Mary: Christina Romer
• Santa Clara University School of Law: Miguel S. Demapan, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
• Vermont Law: Howard Dean (Yeeeeeeeea–haaaaaaaa)

Photo: Telwink, 1910 Harris County Courthouse

The restoration work is apparently well under way at the old 1910 Harris County Court House. The county estimated $58,300,000 for the project. According to county reports, it was a tourist destination in its day:

The fifth courthouse was constructed of pink Texas granite and brick, reaching 210 feet into the modest Houston skyline. In 1910, this was almost 100 feet above the highest point of any other Houston building. The stairwell and rotunda was lined with “the most perfectly matched marble in the United States”. Every piece was measured and fitted at the Georgia quarry and the panels were placed so that the veins of the marble formed all kinds of figures – from owls and peacocks to women’s figures. The courthouse attracted visitors from all over the country.

According to the most recent financial report to discuss the project, the 100th anniversary of the building is scheduled for March 2011 and a goal is to be near completion of the project in time to coincide with that date. Both the First and the Fourteenth Courts of Appeals will move to the renovated court house upon completion.

• Matthew Henson: Description and History of the 1910 Harris County Courthouse
• Offcite: Courting Change, Resurrecting the Historic Harris County Courthouse

PHOTO: BCM

Cynthia Woods Mitchell passed away yesterday after a long battle with Alzheimers. I knew her best as a pavilion; given her passion for the arts she might not mind being remembered that way. Among her more significant accomplishments, she raised 10 children with her husband George, to whom she was married for 66 years, helped plan and build The Woodlands and rebuild downtown Galveston, and was an ardent supported of the arts and sciences and of the University of Houston, her alma mater.

• Culturemap: Cynthia Woods Mitchell is remembered as a visionary optimist
• Houston Chronicle: Humanitarian was ‘a force of nature’
• Houstonist: Houston Philanthropist, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Passes Away