Matthew L. Spitzer, holder of the Packard Trustee Chair in Law at the University of Southern California, and also Professor of Law and Social Science at the California Institute of Technology, has accepted a senior offer from the law school at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is a leading scholar in law and economics, mass media and telecommunications law, and administrative law, among other areas.  He was also Dean of the law school at the University of Southern California from 2000-2006.  That's certainly a major pick-up for Texas, and continues a good run that UT has had on lateral hires the last two years, including two other law and economics scholars, Ronen Avraham and Abraham Wickelgren, both from Northwestern Uninversity, as well as Ronald Mann (commercial law) from Columbia Law School and Robert Bone (civil procedure, intellectual property) from Boston University, among several others.