Two Named to Receive First Enfield, Little Professorships

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Two accomplished University of Arkansas School of Law professors have been selected to receive the first William H. Enfield and Clayton N. Little Endowed Professorships.

Professor John J. Watkins has been named the William H. Enfield Professor of Law and Professor Carol Goforth has been selected as the Clayton N. Little Professor of Law.

Watkins has taught at the law school since 1983. His principal courses are Arkansas civil procedure, conflict of laws, appellate practice, and mass communications law. Since 1985, Watkins has served as a member of and principal draftsman for the Arkansas Supreme Court’s Committee on Civil Procedure, which recommends revisions in the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure, the Arkansas Rules of Appellate Procedure-Civil, and the Arkansas Supreme Court rules. The author of numerous law review articles, he has written two books: "The Mass Media and the Law" (1990) and "The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act" (3^rd ed. 1998). Watkins previously was the Ben J. Altheimer Professor of Legal Advocacy and the Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor.

A 1976 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Watkins practiced law with the firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., and was law clerk to the late Judge Homer Thornberry of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Watkins holds a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law, a master’s degree in mass communication from University of Texas and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas.

Goforth joined the faculty at the University of Arkansas in 1993 and has been the Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor the past two years. She has taught most of the business entity-oriented courses offered by the law school, including advanced corporations, business organizations, business planning, corporate finance and securities regulation. Beginning in 2000-2001, she will teach a corporate counsel class and supervise a corporate counsel externship. Many of her recent writings have focused on limited liability companies (LLCs) and limited liability partnerships (LLPs), including articles dealing with the securities classification of LLC membership interests, the ethical issues when law firms seek to organize as one of these limited liability entities, and other issues raised by the recognition of these new forms of business entities. She also has participated in drafting and revising state statutes dealing with these entities. In 1999, she was elected to the prestigious American Law Institute, which consists of eminent federal and state judges, distinguished lawyers and respected law professors.

Goforth holds a bachelor’s degree and a juris doctor degree from the University of Arkansas. After graduating first in her law school class at the U of A, Goforth practiced law in Tulsa, Okla., for five years before moving to New Jersey to teach at Seton Hall University School of Law. After five years on the faculty at Seton Hall, she returned to northwest Arkansas to join the UA law school faculty. Dean Robert B. Moberly praised both professors as accomplished members of the University of Arkansas School of Law faculty who have made significant contributions to the law school, legal scholarship and the entire legal community.

"Professor Watkins has been a prolific writer and presenter and has firmly established himself as a leading expert in mass communications law and the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act," Moberly said. "He has demonstrated a marked devotion to public service at the state and local levels as evidenced by his work on the Arkansas Supreme Court’s Committee on Civil Procedure. He also has played a critical role in efforts to address providing public information in electronic form, having been appointed by the governor in 1999 to the state’s Electronic Records Study Commission."

"Professor Goforth also has a significant record of accomplishments as a legal scholar and law professor," the dean said. "She has written on a wide variety of subjects, and her articles appear in a number of national publications. She is developing a national reputation, as evidenced by her recent election to the prestigious American Law Institute.

She also chaired the law school committee that prepared the institutional accreditation self-study. Members from the American Bar Association and Association of American Law Schools accreditation team praised that document as the best they had seen in their many years of accreditation reviews."

Both professorships were made possible through the generous donations of Judge William H. Enfield, one of northwest Arkansas’ most respected judges and corporate lawyers.

Enfield, a resident of Bentonville, Ark., is a 1948 graduate of the University’s School of Law and was at one time a professor at the school.

Enfield’s first assignment as professor at the School of Law was to teach Silas Hunt, the school’s first African American student. Hunt, a brilliant student who entered in 1948, died halfway through his second year of law school of a war-related illness, but not before he opened the doors for other African American students. Enfield continued to teach on a part-time basis for five years.

He became interested in politics and was appointed to the position of Benton County Judge in 1951, where he served for 13 months before returning to the practice of law he had established in 1949.

Judge Enfield not only had a distinguished law career, but also worked alongside the movers and shakers who helped shape northwest Arkansas. He organized the first corporations for Wal-Mart, Peterson Industries and most of the rural telephone companies in northwest Arkansas.

After practicing law in Benton County for 20 years, he sat on the bench as Circuit Judge for 20 years.

Clayton N. Little, a 1937 graduate of the School of Law, also was a distinguished attorney and long-time law partner of Judge Enfield. Little died in 1994 after a lengthy career in politics and law.

"The law profession has been good to me and my dear friend, Clayton Little," said Judge Enfield last fall in announcing the endowed positions. "Remembering my experiences as a professor, I wanted to find a way to help bring more quality legal talent to the University to teach future generations of lawyers."

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