South Texas College of Law Houston’s Fred Parks Law Library recently acquired the papers of Judge Frank G. Evans, known as the “father of alternate dispute resolution.”
During his career, Evans accomplished groundbreaking work developing conflict resolution processes and programs outside the usual legal system. His contributions include creating judicial and appellate settlement conference programs, implementing juvenile justice peer mediation programs in schools, and sponsoring and drafting the Texas Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) financing and court referral statute.
Evans was also the principal draftsman of the 1978 ADR Procedures Act that established a new policy in Texas courts encouraging voluntary, peaceable resolution of civil disputes.
A native Texan, Evans practiced law following his discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps at the end of the Korean Conflict. In 1973, Governor Dolph Briscoe appointed him to serve as a justice on the First Court of Appeals in Houston.
Later, he became the Chief Justice of the court, elevated to that position by Governor William P. Clements. Following his retirement in 1990, Evans entered private practice as the Judicial Officer of Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS).
He was associated with South Texas for decades. Evans served as an adjunct professor beginning in 1977, and in 1994, he was named Visiting Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Legal Responsibility at STCL Houston, where he taught courses related to alternative dispute resolution. The center was later renamed the Frank Evans Center for Conflict Resolution.
“His long relationship with South Texas and his significant place in the development of alternatives to litigation make this acquisition so exciting for us,” said Colleen Manning, director of the Fred Parks Law Library and assistant professor of law at South Texas.
“South Texas is the natural choice to house Judge Evans’ papers,” said Heather Kushnerick, special collections librarian and college archivist. “I think it is fitting that his collection is coming to us during our centennial year, given how many important events and milestones that Judge Evans was here for and took part in. It feels very much like a homecoming.”
The Judge Frank G. Evans Papers include his documentation on the development of ADR practices in Texas as well as his work on establishing ADR programs in Latin America. They are an invaluable addition to the Fred Parks Law Library Special Collections, which seeks to document the legal history of Texas.
