John ROBERTSON

ROBERTSON, John A. John A. Robertson, beloved in many quartersas a dedicated colleague and cherished teacher at the University of Texas Law School, as a supporter of the arts, and as a genuine friend died July 5 at the age of 74. His was a curious mind, one that combined interests in science and the law to lecture widely on issues of bioethics. His writings include the books the Rights of the Critically Ill and Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies, and many articles on reproductive rights, genetics, organ transplantation, and human experimentation. But he was equally at home talking basketball or poetryhis Austin home was stacked with well-thumbed books of classic and contemporary works. And his enthusiasms extended to art collecting; in his typically unpretentious way, he was as excited about artists unknown as known. John, who grew up in Maple Shade, New Jersey, with a father who was a patent attorney and a mother who was a nurse, headed off to Dartmouth and then Harvard Law School, clerking at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court before joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1973. He began teaching at UT in 1980, quickly gaining a following among his students and carving out friendships inside and outside the university. John was preceded in death by his parents, Alice Rutkoski and John Ancona Robertson; his brother, William "Martin" Robertson; and his wife, Carlota Smith, a distinguished linguistics professor at UT with whom he was married for ten happy years before her death in 2007. His survivors include his sister, Carolyn Robertson Schreiber, of Wood-Ridge, New Jersey; his brother, Richard A. Robertson, of Cherry Hill, New Jersey; five nephews and three nieces, some of whom he helped put through school; his step-children, Alison Smith and Joel Smith, and their families; and the graceful and stalwart Jane Kielty Stott, in whose companionship he basked in his last years, and who took such excellent, loving care of him to the end. A memorial service will be set at a later date.