Founding of the law school In 1878, Serranus Clinton Hastings donated $100,000 () for the creation of a law school. He arranged for the enactment of a legislative act on March 26, 1878, to create the Hastings College of the Law as a separate legal entity affiliated with the University of California. This was apparently intended for compatibility with Section 8 of the university's Organic Act, which authorized the board of regents to affiliate with independent self-sustaining professional colleges. Another reason for making the gift in this fashion was that Hastings desired to impose certain conditions on his gift, while "policy and law dictated that a free-gift could not be hedged by power of reversion." This was in facial conflict with the "affiliate" language in Section 8 of the Organic Act, so in March 1885, another act was passed to create a
pro forma board of trustees for the sole purpose of holding title to the law school's assets at arm's length from the regents (but under which the regents would continue to have the right to manage such assets). In deference to the 1883 act, the Hastings board of directors ceased to meet. In other words, the 1879 ratification of the state's second constitution (which remains in effect today) effectively stripped the
California State Legislature of the power to amend preexisting statutes governing the University of California, including the 1878 act. In the early 20th century, the Affiliated Colleges agreed to voluntarily submit to the regents' governance during the term of UC President
Benjamin Ide Wheeler, as the UC Board of Regents had come to recognize the problems inherent in the existence of independent entities that shared the UC
brand but over which the university had no real control. The board was reluctant to move the law school from its traditional
Civic Center location, but this doomed the law school to five more decades of wandering from one temporary site to the next, for a total of 16 different locations between its founding and the opening of a permanent campus in 1953. The Hastings College of the Law was for many years considered the primary law school of the University of California with the purpose of preparing lawyers for the practice of law in the state, whereas the Department of Jurisprudence on the Berkeley campus—which later became the School of Jurisprudence, then Boalt Hall School of Law, and now
Berkeley Law—was intended for the study of law as an academic discipline. Both schools were launched with one professor assisted by part-time instructors who also happened to be practicing lawyers. With no permanent campus, Hastings could not build its own academic
law library, then regarded as an essential component of a law school (before the invention of
computer-assisted legal research), and was forced to rely on the city's public law library. As a result, Hastings was involuntarily ejected from AALS twice, in 1916 and 1927. This explains how
Edward Robeson Taylor could simultaneously serve as dean of Hastings, dean of a medical college, chairman of the board of trustees of the
San Francisco Public Library, poet laureate of San Francisco, and
Mayor of San Francisco. According to the University of California, Los Angeles political science professor J.A.C. Grant, it was believed there could only be one "law department" (i.e., only one official UC law school), which is why the Department of Jurisprudence at Berkeley retained its name even after it began to award law degrees. The University of California, Berkeley did not rename its School of Jurisprudence to a School of Law until the state legislature passed a bill in 1947 authorizing UCLA to create a "school of law." Boalt Hall's newly-hired dean,
William Lloyd Prosser, got wind of this in 1948 while visiting UCLA to help plan
the new law school and decided that Berkeley could get away with the same thing.
Transformation Hastings College of the Law underwent a dramatic transformation under the leadership of David E. Snodgrass, who served as dean from 1940 to 1963.
The 65 Club Snodgrass exploited the law school's independence from the University of California and its
mandatory retirement policies to begin the "65 Club", the practice of hiring faculty who had been forced into mandatory retirement at age 65 from
Ivy League and other elite institutions. The very first appointment in 1940 was Orrin Kip McMurray, a Hastings graduate who had served as Boalt Hall's second dean. Despite the difficult history between Berkeley and Hastings, Berkeley supplied more members of the 65 Club than any other law school, including Prosser himself, which led to a more amicable relationship between the two law schools. The specific charges against Hastings are that he organized militias led by his employees to massacre the Yuki people who lived on or near his extensive land-holdings in
Mendocino County, California, in the late 1850s during the
California genocide. Hundreds of Yuki, including women and children, were killed in what are called the
Round Valley Settler Massacres of 1856–1859. In 2020, after studying the matter for three years, a commission established by the school confirmed that its founder had managed a forced labor camp, organized murderous "Indian hunts", and otherwise participated actively in the genocide that killed most of the Native American population of Mendocino County, California. However, the commission – which was led by chancellor David L. Faigman – recommended against a proposal to rename the school "as it could lead to public confusion" and "result in a decline in applications and perhaps a loss of philanthropic and alumni support." On October 27, 2021, Faigman clarified his position: "There is no effort from me or the college to oppose a name change ... Such a change would require action from the California State Legislature and Governor's office... If changing the name is something the College needs to do to bring restorative action and there is legislative action to facilitate that change, I will engage with that process." In late October 2021
The New York Times published an article about S.C. Hastings' involvement in genocide against the Yuki and advocating for a name change. The article galvanized alumni, including former San Francisco mayor and
Democratic Party power broker
Willie Brown, to support a name change. On November 2, 2021, the board of directors for the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, voted unanimously to remove Serranus Clinton Hastings from the name of the law school. The name change bill was signed into law by Governor
Gavin Newsom on September 23, 2022, and took effect January 1, 2023. On October 4, 2022, descendants of Serranus Clinton Hastings filed suit against the UC Law SF directors and the state to block the name change. The plaintiffs were represented by lawyers
Harmeet Dhillon, Gregory Michael and Dorothy Yamamoto. The suit claims that the California act of 1878 contains the terms of a contract with Serranus Hastings. Interviewed in the
San Francisco Chronicle, David Carrillo (a member of the law faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, and not involved in the suit) said that there is a distinction between a signed agreement between Serranus Clinton Hastings and the state (which could be a binding contract that the legislature cannot repudiate by enactment) and a legislative act (which cannot prevent the legislature from later amending or repealing it). ==Location==