He was enrolled as a student at the University of Alabama when he and his friends listened to the news broadcast of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
During 1949 he served as a Veterans Service Office and married Maude Applegate Beatty, also from Tuscaloosa, whom he met at the University.
Beatty practiced law in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with the firm of Dominick, Rosenfeld & Nicol from 1953 to 1955.
Again at Dean Harrison's suggestion, Beatty applied for and was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University during the school year 1958-9.
In 1970, he left Tuscaloosa to become Dean of the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University.
In 1976, a group of former students, including Edward L. Hardin, Jr., persuaded Beatty to enter the Democratic primary to run for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court, which he won.