Roy Mersky - UPDATED

UT Law has lost one of it brightest stars.  Roy Mersky died Tuesday.  He held the titles of Harry Reasoner Regents Chair in Law and Director of Research.  Roy was well known nationally, for among many other things, his classic Fundamentals of Legal Research.

The Austin American-Statesman has, "Director made UT Law library one of the nation's best."

Roy Mersky was a giant in his field who made the University of Texas law library one of the best in the nation, friends and colleagues said. Along the way, he taught worldwide, wrote prolifically and compiled a résumé more than 40 pages long.

"He was probably the most famous law librarian in the history of legal education," said Larry Sager, dean of the University of Texas School of Law.

Mersky, 82, died Tuesday at an Austin hospice. The director of the UT Tarlton Law Library had lymphoma and injured himself in a fall days before his death, his colleagues said.

Here is Roy with Linda Greenhouse, the New York Times Supreme Court reporter, when she spoke to the ACS Austin chapters in 2005 at UT Law.

 

Update -- James Canup of the ACLU of Texas just sent this to me:

Mr. Mersky's family is requesting that, in lieu of flowers, tribute gifts be made in his memory to the ACLU of Texas and to Texas Democracy Foundation (The Texas Observer).  His daughter Deborah Mersky, who lives in Seattle, told me this morning that Mr. Mersky was a strong supporter of constitutional rights, particularly the First Amendment, and cared deeply for the ACLU.