Written by by Robert Bradley Jr at wattsupwiththat.com
I bring you four academicians.
- W. L. Summers
He was born in Kingman, Indiana in 1888 and died in 1963. He took his Baccalaureate Degree and his first law degree from the University of Indiana in 1911 and a J.D. Degree from Yale in 1912. He briefly practiced law and then became a Professor of Law at the Universities of Florida and Kentucky and in 1920, joined the faculty of law at the University of Illinois. He was a member of the Order of the Coif, an advisor to the Restatement of the Law of Real Property and published articles dealing with oil and gas in many legal periodicals. He was the author of one of the first major treatises on the law of oil and gas. I am speaking of W. L. Summers, author of Summers on Oil and Gas.
II. A. W. Walker, Jr
He was born in Denison, Texas in 1901 and died in 1987. He took his Baccalaureate Degree in 1921 and his Law Degree in 1923 from the University of Texas and did post-graduate work at both Columbia and Yale in law. He practiced law for two years and then became Professor of Law at the University of Texas. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Order of the Coif, was the editor of a case book on oil and gas and published numerous articles in the legal periodicals. I am speaking of A. W. Walker, Jr., Professor of Law at the University of Texas. He was at Texas for 25 years and in 1948, resigned from the faculty to re-enter the practice of law with the Dallas-based Jackson, Walker law firm.
III. Eugene O. Kuntz
He was born in 1913 and died in 1995. He took his Baccalaureate Degree and his Law Degree from Baylor University and his LL.M. Degree from Harvard. He practiced law briefly before becoming Professor of Law at the University of Wyoming and thereafter at the University of Oklahoma. While at the University of Oklahoma, he was also from 1958 until 1965, a partner in the McAfee, Taft, law firm in Oklahoma City. He was Dean of the Law School at the University of Oklahoma for five years. He was widely published in the legal periodicals before authoring his treatise and was editor of a leading case book on oil and gas. I am speaking of Professor Eugene O. Kuntz, the author of Kuntz on Oil and Gas, which had its beginning as a revision of Thornton on Oil and Gas first published in 1904.
IV. Howard R. Williams
He was born in 1915 and is still active. He took his Baccalaureate Degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1937 and his Law Degree from Columbia University in 1940. He was admitted to practice law in New York and practiced there briefly following which he became a Professor of Law at the University of Texas from 1946 to 1951, a Professor of Law at Columbia University from 1951 until 1963, and a Professor of Law at Stanford University from 1963 until 1998, when he became an Emeritus Professor of Law. He was editor of a leading case book on oil and gas and an author of a treatise on oil and gas. I am speaking of Professor Howard R. Williams, Emeritus Professor of Law at Stanford University and an author of Williams and Meyers on Oil and Gas.
Their Legacy
The subject which I wish to speak about for a few minutes has to do with prominent academicians. I do not purport to be a legal historian. But I do know that the law of oil and gas is relatively young. If the common law had its origin in 1066 when William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel, we know that many branches of the law which we continue to study today, had their origins hundreds of years ago. I refer to subjects like Real Property, Equity, Contracts, Torts and Remedies.
It is said by some that the drilling of an oil well in 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Colonel Drake, “ushered in the Petroleum Era.” It is clear that the underlying principles of oil and gas law were laid down, defined and developed in the early and middle part of the 1900’s. By that I mean, it was in that time frame that the legal concepts relating to the rule of capture, theories of mineral ownership, conveyancing of minerals and royalty, the nature of the oil and gas lease and the implied covenants were evolving and being addressed by the courts.
In 1928, Professor A. W. Walker put it this way:
Oil and gas was a specie of property peculiar unto itself, . . . As a result of this realization, there is in the process of evolution today a distinct body of rules of law which may properly be designated the law of oil and gas. 6 Tex. Law Rev. 125 (1948).