Robert F. Holland
Associate Professor of Law
Biographical information -- Prof. Robert F. Holland
Professor Robert F. Holland joined the faculty of South Texas College of Law in 2002. He teaches legal research and writing courses, and is faculty advisor to the student chapter of the Federalist Society. His primary areas of academic interest are criminal trial procedure and advocacy, evidence, and military law.
Before becoming a law professor, Prof. Holland was an officer, lawyer, and trial judge in the United States Army. He is a retired Regular Army colonel. Prof. Holland was born in 1950 in Ithaca, New York.
Upon graduation from the US Military Academy at West Point in 1972, Prof. Holland began his military career as a Field Artillery officer in Germany. He earned his J.D. degree from Duke Law School, graduating with honors in 1977. While at Duke, he was an editor of the Law Journal and was named to the Order of the Coif, the national legal honor society.
After admission to the North Carolina Bar, he was re-commissioned as an Army officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He served as a prosecutor with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and then as a defense counsel and senior (supervising) defense counsel with the Eighth Army in Korea (1979-1980). After completing the Army’s Judge Advocate Officer Graduate Course as its distinguished graduate in 1981, he worked for four years as an attorney on the Army General Staff at the Pentagon (1981-1985). He then was assigned to Fort Hood, Texas (1986-1991), where he held several positions supervising military and civilian attorneys working on both civil and criminal matters, at the 2d Armored Division, and later at Headquarters, III Corps & Fort Hood. His next assignment was in Korea, where he served as the Staff Judge Advocate to the commanding general of the Army’s 2d Infantry Division (1991-1992).
Upon return from his second tour of duty in Korea, Lieutenant Colonel Holland was appointed as a military judge by the Army’s Judge Advocate General and was promoted to the grade of Colonel. He served three consecutive tours as a military trial (or circuit) judge, first at Fort Hood, Texas (1992-1995), then at Fort Campbell, Kentucky (1995-1998), and then at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (1998- 2002). In each assignment, Colonel Holland regularly traveled to the various Army posts in his geographic area of responsibility to preside over jury and bench trials by courts-martial.
During his ten years as a military judge, Colonel Holland presided over hundreds of trials involving soldiers for felony crimes ranging from murder, rape, and sexual abuse of children to drug dealing and desertion. He handled trials by courts-martial at more than twenty-five different courtrooms at Army and Air Force bases in locations ranging from Alaska to Panama. Before retiring from active duty in June 2002 after thirty years of active service in the Regular Army, Colonel Holland earned the military Parachutist badge, the Air Assault badge, and the Ranger Tab. His military decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Army Commendation Medal. He is a member of the state bars of Texas and North Carolina, and is also admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.
Published articles:
Improving Criminal Jury Verdicts: Learning from the Court-Martial, 97 J. Crim. L. & Criminology (Fall 2006).
Abu Ghraib: Just Following Orders, South Texas College of Law Quarterly, Summer 2004, at 2.
Military Justice at Fifty, 50 Army Magazine, May 2000, at 43.
Presentations:
Sentencing Procedures of Courts-Martial and the Modern Military Corrections System, a CLE presentation to the Military Law Section of the State Bar of Texas, in March 2002, Galveston.
The Modern American Military Criminal Justice System, a CLE presentation to the attorneys of the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District, Texas, on 16 August 2005, Houston.
How Texas Criminal Jury Verdicts Could be Strengthened: Learning from the Court-Martial, a CLE presentation to the attorneys of the Texas State Bar's Military Law Section scheduled for 30 March 2007 in Galveston.
Education:
B.S., United States Military Academy, 1972
J.D., Duke University School of Law, 1977
E-mail: rholland@stcl.edu
Phone: 713-646-2903
Office: 715T
Areas of Expertise legal research & writing, evidence, criminal law, military law, and criminal trial advocacy
Bibliography
of Writings
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