Professor Margaret Harris Amsler

Margaret Harris Amsler served on the Baylor Law School faculty for almost thirty-two years. She was the first female law professor in the state of Texas, and only the third in the United States.

Amsler received her B.A. from Baylor and an M.A. from Wellesley College. She was the only woman to graduate from Baylor Law School when she finished at the top of her class in 1937. Her father, Judge Nat Harris, taught on the law school faculty from 1920 through 1944. Amsler followed in her father's footsteps by joining the faculty in 1940. After the law school reopened in 1946, Amsler served as acting dean. She taught contracts, agency and partnership, corporations, commercial transactions, real property, personal property, bills and notes, insurance, and suretyship and mortgages.

Amsler's work extended beyond Baylor. In 1938, she became the first woman elected to the Texas Legislature from McLennan County. She was instrumental in revising the law of corporations in Texas during the 1950s and 1960s. She served as the chair of the State Bar of Texas committee on revision of corporation law from 1958 through 1968. In 1961, she received the first President's Award from the Texas Bar Association in recognition of her outstanding service to the legal profession.

At the time of her retirement in 1972, Amsler had served the longest tenure of any Baylor Law School faculty member. She continued to practice law for a number of years after retiring as a full-time faculty member. Among the several articles written about her, her career was discussed recently in Barbara Baden Aldave, Women in the Law in Texas: The Stories of Three Pioneers, 25 St. Mary's L.J. 289 (1993).

She passed away in 2002.