By John Temple LigonTemple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Walter F. “Jack” Pratt in front of Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, a leading proponent of civil liberties in 18th century England. Walter F. “Jack” Pratt was born in Jackson, Miss. He lost his parents when he was in elementary school; his grandmother looked after him and his younger brother.

Pratt’s strongest memories of Mississippi are reflected in the writings by Willie Morris of Yazoo City. Morris was the controversial editor of Harper’s Magazine in the early 70s. Morris’s book, North Toward Home , is Pratt’s recommendation to anyone interested in understanding contemporary Mississippi.

Pratt graduated from high school in Jackson and moved on to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He majored in history with the intent to eventually teach law. He graduated magna cum laude in three years.

Intact and out of college in 1968 meant military eligibility for Pratt and just about every other young man in the country. That was the same year of President Lyndon Johnson’s refusal to run for re–election, “Miami and the Siege of Chicago,” and the triumphant return of Richard Nixon.

Pratt graduated from officer candidate school as an infantry lieutenant and immediately joined the instruction staff of the Ranger School at Fort Benning, Ga. The next year he was sent to Korea, and the next year after that he was in Oxford, UK, back in school.

As a Rhodes Scholar, Pratt spent three years at Oxford University to earn his D.Phil. in legal history. Then, still serious about teaching law, he went back to the U.S. to get his law degree at Yale.

As a new law graduate, Pratt was invited to clerk for Judge Charles Clark, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, and later for Chief Justice Warren Burger, U.S. Supreme Court.

By 1979, Pratt was ready to teach. He began as an assistant professor of law at Duke University. While still with Duke, he took a year as a visiting professor at the Clark Law School, Brigham Young University. In 1986, he went to work at the University of Notre Dame as an associate professor of law, where he stayed for 20 years.

While at Notre Dame, Pratt was co–director of the Notre Dame London Law Center. He was the associate dean for academic affairs, and for six years he was the executive associate dean.

Pratt is a contributor to several law texts. He has four entries in the Oxford Companion to American Law . He has nine entries in the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States . He is the author of two books on law. In 1999, USC Press published his book, The Supreme Court Under Edward Douglass White, 1910–1921.

Pratt’s wife Dottie has her Ph.D. from Notre Dame, and she teaches history at USC. Their boys, success stories, are grown and gone. Dr. and Dr. Pratt live in Wales Garden.

Pratt will assume the full duties of the dean’s office this July 1. In the meantime, he has to raise $75 million for the law school’s new building.

The new building is planned for the block bounded by Gervais Street, Pickens Street, Senate Street, and Bull Street. It is designed by the Smith Group architectural firm based in Washington, D.C., and the Columbia firm, the Boudreaux Group.

The architectural scale model of the new law school is on display in the waiting area outside Dean Pratt’s office.