My former colleague David Epstein has sent along the sad news that very long-time SMU law professor Joseph Webb McKnight passed away a few days ago. William Bridge of SMU Law has sent along the following remembrance:
Joseph Webb McKnight, Professor Emeritus of Law and Larry and Jane Harlan Faculty Fellow Emeritus at SMU Dedman School of Law, passed away peacefully on November 30, 2015. He was 90.
Professor McKnight inspired many through his historic contributions to the development of family and matrimonial property law in Texas, as well as his scholarship on legal history. He was a prolific scholar, authoring over 100 articles and several books. He held leadership positions in a number of legal and historical organizations, directed the Texas Family Code project, and was a principal drafter of several important Texas laws addressing matrimonial property matters, including the property rights of married women in Texas. In the words of one colleague, Joe McKnight is legal history.
After practicing at Cravath Swaine & Moore in New York, he joined the faculty of the SMU School of Law in 1955, where he taught until his retirement in 2014 (and indeed assisted in classes until the week before his death. A dedicated scholar and law reformer, his true love was for teaching and students, many of whom remained life-long colleagues and friends. Professor McKnight and his wife, Mildred Payne McKnight, entertained a tremendous number of law students, faculty, scholars and friends in their Dallas home and, during many summers, at garden parties in Oxford.
During his career, Professor McKnight collected more than 6,000 antiquarian law books at SMU Dedman Law – thought to be the largest collection of its kind in private hands in the world, with the oldest book printed in 1481. He studied and taught bookbinding and book conservation at the Dallas Craft Guild for more than twenty years, so he could restore his cherished volumes to their best possible condition. In 2011, Professor McKnight donated this extraordinary collection to the law school, which prominently holds it in SMU Dedman Law’s Underwood Law Library.
“Joe McKnight was a truly remarkable teacher and scholar and a wonderfully kind and generous colleague,” said Jennifer M. Collins, Judge James Noel Dean and Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law. “Throughout his distinguished academic career, he was an inspiration to all who knew him. He will be greatly missed.”
He was born on February 17, 1925 in San Angelo, Texas, where he was raised during some of the most severe years of the Great Depression. Notwithstanding tough times, he loved the land of his origins, and he and his four siblings returned often, proud of their West Texas roots.
He excelled academically at an early age and graduated at the top of his high school class at the age of 16. After completing several years at the University of Texas, where he was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity, he volunteered for the Navy and served during and after World War II. After returning to the University of Texas, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and in 1947 went up to Magdalen College at Oxford University. His Oxford years were formative, and he earned the degrees of Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence, a Bachelor of Civil Law, and a Master of Arts. He later received an LL.M. from Columbia University.
Professor McKnight was preceded in death by his parents and siblings, and his first wife, Julia Ann Dyer McKnight. He is survived by his second wife, Mildred Payne McKnight, his sons John B. and J. Adair, his step-children, Sawnie R. Aldredge III and Amy P. Aldredge, and several grandchildren.
Joe McKnight was a respected and beloved faculty colleague. Beyond his prolific scholarship and dedicated teaching, he served the law school and the university in many formal ways, from the Presidency of the Phi Beta Kappa chapter to Associate Dean for Academic Affairs to Law Faculty Marshal. Those at SMU, in the state of Texas, and throughout the country who were fortunate to know him professionally and personally mourn his death.
Joe was very helpful to me when I started my career at The University of Texas. RIP.
Posted by: Tom Russell | December 03, 2015 at 05:49 PM