Joseph Webb McKnight

Legal historians will be saddened by the death of Joe McKnight on 30 November. Joe, a native Texan, who passed most of his career at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, was one of the most delightful and kindest of men, and also excellent company. An evening spent with Joe and his wife Mimi, whether at their home in Highland Park, or in a restaurant, or indeed in Oxford which they both loved, was always something to be looked forward to as promising excellent food and drink and a great deal of fun and wit, given their quirky and off-beat senses of humour.

A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Joe was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, graduating MA and BCL; later he acquired an LLM from Columbia. Joe was a notable collector of law books, and this blogger certainly remembers bidding for him at an auction in Edinburgh, and then wrapping large numbers of books to post to Texas. When this blogger was a Visiting Associate Professor at SMU, one of the delights was meeting Joe in his office to open the latest parcel of books that had arrived from Europe or Latin America: an unwrapping filled with the sound of clapping as Joe killed the moths that liked the oriental carpet he had in his office.

Joe was a man who loved life and enhanced the lives of others. We have all been enriched by him in many ways. A longer obituary may follow in this blog.