OCU LAW - Faculty - Michael T. Gibson

Michael T. Gibson
Professor of Law

Phone: (405) 208-5131

Office Hours:

Open door policy.

Courses:
Contracts • Sales • Legal Analysis • Contract Drafting • Federal Jurisdiction

Education:
B.A., University of Nebraska; J.D., Yale University; Phi Beta Kappa

Background:
Professor Gibson served as law clerk to Chief Judge Warren Urbom of the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska prior to joining the OCU law faculty.

Teaching:

I believe that teaching is a crucial part of my job, and I devote considerable energy to it. My office door is open throughout the day, except during lunch and the hour or so before a class, when I’m busy preparing. Students are welcome to visit whenever my door is open.

To help students better prepare for class, I’ve prepared an extensive set of reading materials for each course. For each class session, those reading materials

explain why the assignment is important;
describe how the legal doctrines in the assignment are significant in the real world;
provide background information that students may need to understand the cases in the assignment,
present a series of questions that we’ll discuss in class; and
provide one or more fact patterns that help show how a legal doctrine works.

To help students understand and follow the classroom discussion, about fifteen minutes before each class I use a digital projector to display an outline of the class, and I constantly refer to that outline during class.

To help students learn how to apply the rules they’ve found in cases and statutes, we’ll frequently approach a problem (usually drawn from an actual case) just as an attorney would. For example, after we’ve identified the elements of a rule, we’ll use those elements to create a list of witnesses we would call during the trial and the questions that we would ask them.

Publications:

Congressional Authority to Induce Waivers of State Sovereign Immunity: The Conditional Spending Power (and Beyond), 29 HASTINGS CONST. L.Q. 439-525 (2002).
Reliance Damages in the Law of Sales Under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, 29 ARIZ. ST. L.J. 909-1013 (1998).
Private Concurrent Litigation in Light of Younger, Pennzoil, and Colorado River, 14 OKLA. CITY U. L. REV. 185-262 (1989).
Promissory Estoppel, Article 2 of the U.C.C., and the Restatement (Third) of Contracts, 73 IOWA L. REV. 659-717 (1988).
The Supreme Court and Freedom of Expression, 1791-1917, 55 FORDHAM L. REV. 263-333 (1986).

Continued . . .

Personal Interests:

Model railroading; Railroad photography; the Union Pacific Railroad; Celtic music and dress (including a kilt in the Buchanan Old Colors tartan); the history of the United States (especially the Great Plains) and of the British Isles; and exploring Oklahoma.

Address:
OCU School of Law
2501 N. Blackwelder
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73106