Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth, Texas mourns the passing of Judge Joe Spurlock II, senior professor of law and director of the Asian Judicial Institute, who passed away on Tuesday, June 9, in Fort Worth at the age of 82. He was born in 1938 in Fort Worth to Clarice Spurlock, the first woman elected to the Fort Worth City Council in 1953, and father, Joe C. Spurlock, who was a trial and appellate court judge who helped create the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. His grandfather, Sheriff Joe G. Spurlock of Throckmorton County, Texas, died in 1910, two days after being shot while attempting to serve a warrant. Otis Rogers, his great-uncle, was a Fort Worth attorney, as is his brother, Dean Spurlock. Spurlock was a professor at Texas Wesleyan University law school, which later became Texas A&M University School of Law  in 1992. By the time he joined the faculty, Judge Spurlock had already spent years in private practice and served as an assistant criminal district attorney, a member of the Texas Legislature, a trial court judge and an appellate justice.

Legal reform and advancing the rule of law were among his passions, ones which ultimately led him to invitations to speak with the president and prime minister of Mongolia, among others, upon whom he pressed the importance of an independent judiciary. The founding in 1999 of the Asian Judicial Institute, which Judge Spurlock led for years, occurred soon thereafter.