Mark Edwin Burge
Legal Writing Professor
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Courses: Legal Analysis, Research & Writing I and II; Payment Systems; Sales & Leases; LARW III: Contract Drafting.

Professor Mark Burge joined the faculty of Texas Wesleyan University School of Law in 2005 following eight years of private practice in business and commercial litigation. Professor Burge’s practice included representation of financial institutions victimized by kiting and other negotiable instrument fraud schemes, along with advocacy for plaintiffs and creditors in complex multi-district federal litigation. Professor Burge brings to the law school broad professional experience ranging from a large national firm to partnership at Bodoin, Burnside, Burge & Agnew, P.C., a specialized litigation boutique in Fort Worth. He maintains an of-counsel relationship with the successor to that firm.

In his scholarship, as in his teaching, Professor Burge seeks to unite legal doctrinal theory to real-world lawyering skills. Currently, his scholarship focuses on methods of statutory interpretation, the changing role of stare decisis, and the implications of evolving interpretive methodologies and institutions for the practice of law and American legal education. Much of the traditional role of case precedent and judicially-interpreted statutes in achieving predictable outcomes in our common-law system is fading, and the challenge facing lawyers in the next generation is exploring the boundaries of what, in future practice, will constitute “essential” lawyering skills. Professor Burge was voted Legal Writing Professor of the Year for 2007-08.

Professor Burge earned his J.D. with honors from the University of Texas School of Law where he was an associate editor of the Texas Law Review and the student coordinator over the teaching quizmaster teaching-assistant program for legal research and writing.  He earned his B.A. in history summa cum laude with honors in major from the University of Houston.

Selected Publications

“Raising a Spectre: Using the Ghost of Law Practice Future to Sell Statutory Analysis Today,” 23 Second Draft 16 (2008).

“Teaching Statutory Construction in an Age of Outsourcing: Are Our Students Ready to Play Judge Yet?” (in progress).

“Who Wants to be a Muggle? The Diminished Legitimacy of Law as Magic, in Harry Potter and the Law,” Harry Potter and the Law (Franklin G. Snyder & Jeffrey Thomas eds., Carolina Academic Press, forthcoming 2009).

“Regulatory Reform and the Chevron Doctrine: Can Congress Force Better Decisionmaking by Courts and Agencies?,” 75 Texas Law Review 1085 (1997). [Hein] [LexisNexis] [Westlaw]

Select Published Cases as Counsel

NP Anderson Cotton Exchange, L.P. v. Potter, 230 S.W.3d 457 (Tex. App. – Fort Worth 2007, no pet.)

FFP Mktg., Inc. v. Long Lane Master Trust IV, 169 S.W.3d 402 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2005, no pet.).

Vespa v. National Health Ins. Co., 98 S.W.3d 749 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2003, no pet.).

Armstrong v. Steppes Apartments, Ltd., 57 S.W.3d 37 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2001, pet. denied), cert. denied, 536 U.S. 951 (2002).

Maddox v. American Airlines, Inc., 298 F.3d 694 (8th Cir. 2002).

In re Air Disaster at Little Rock, Arkansas on June 1, 1999, 125 F. Supp. 2d 357 (E.D. Ark. 2000).