One morning last month, I sat in the Cumberland School of Law during a ceremony in which Bill Ross and Howard Walthall were invested as holders of academic chairs.  Of the various recognitions bestowed on faculty, perhaps nothing is of greater symbolic value than the appointment to a chair of instruction.  Professor Walthall spoke that morning of Cumberland’s lineage, a topic near to his heart because he co-authored (with David Langum) a history of the law school.  In his brief remarks, Professor Ross touched on the significance of judicial review, a matter of special interest to him given his background in constitutional law and American legal history.  Seeing these longtime faculty members together on the stage, expressing so much of what is right about higher education in America and accepting with self-effacing gratitude the recognition of their peers, it brought a smile to my face.  Three weeks later, reflecting on that morning, the smile returns.

The world is better because of the quality of the Samford faculty.