Monday, June 15, 2009
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
CORRECTION: USC’s Law School Not First Such Institution in Southern California
By ROGER M. GRACE
Recitations of historical “fact” often entail the unwitting parroting of accepted misconceptions. I engaged, without knowing it, in fiction writing in my Jan. 22 “Reminiscing” column on James Brown Scott, one of the original tenants in the Wilcox Building at Second and Spring, where the MetNews has its offices.
The column begins:
“In its embryonic form 112 years ago, the USC Gould School of Law was, in essence, a bar review course. It was presided over by Los Angeles attorney J.B. Scott.
“The birth of the law school, itself—the first in Southern California and the second in the state—took place on June 12, 1897, upon the filing of articles of incorporation for ‘Los Angeles Law School.’ But conception occurred on Nov. 17, 1896 when the “[Law] Students’ Association of Los Angeles” was formed.”
The 1896 study group did morph into the law school, which became associated with USC in 1900 and was assimilated into it in 1904. Some of the other statements are wrong.
Fallacies conveyed in the column had been oft-repeated. For example, an article by Justin Miller, dean of the USC Law School, appearing in the Feb. 1, 1930 issue of the Los Angeles Times, recites:
“Until 1896 there was no organized effort at law instruction in Southern California and the only law school in the whole of California was the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Resident law students of Southern California pursued their studies in various law offices with no attempt at organized direction of their study.”
The 1930 book “The First Half-Century” by Rockwell D. Hunt says:
“The history of the School of Law [at USC] is clearly interwoven with the history of legal education in the Southwest. Its beginnings were humble. Until 1896 Southern California was without an organized institution for instruction in law, and the only law school in all California was Hastings College of Law, in San Francisco.”
The USC website presently claims: “The University of Southern California Law School was the first law school in the Southwest.”
However, in going through newspaper archives, I’ve come upon references to other pre-1896 stabs at organized legal education in Southern California, including a law school here.
Rather than merely running a correction, I thought I’d provide a run-down on the little known history of early legal education in California.
An act of March 26, 1878, created “Hastings College of the Law” as a constituent of the University of California.
Entrance exams were soon administered in various cities. For example, an ad of June 29, 1887 in the Los Angeles Times announces that an entrance exam “for the college of letters, the college of science, and the college of law will be held at Berkeley, Los Angeles, Grass Valley and Chico” on June 30 and July 1 and 2. The one here took place at the Spring Street School.
The 1878 act provided: “The diploma of the students shall entitle the student to whom it is issued to a license to practice in all the courts of this state, subject to the right of the Chief Justice of the state to order an examination as in ordinary cases of applicants without such diploma.”
That institution, alone, enjoyed the “diploma privilege” for the next 29 years. (In 1907, §280b was added to the Code of Civil Procedure, extending the diploma privilege to graduates “of the University of Southern California College of Law.” The privilege was extended later to law graduates of other institutions; it was repealed in 1917.)
The Law Students Assn. that was formed in 1896 and became a law school was not the first such confederation in Los Angeles of would-be lawyers.
In 1889, law students convened for lectures in the courtroom of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Walter Van Dyke. (That jurist would be elected to the California Supreme Court in 1898 on the Democratic ticket, serving from January, 1899, to December, 1903.)
The July 4, 1889 edition of the Times contains an article saying:
“The Law Students’ Association met last night in the courtroom of Department 4 to further perfect their organization, and to be addressed by Judge Walter Van Dyke upon ‘The Study of the Law.’
“The attendance was large, and Judge Van Dyke spoke for an hour, giving the members hints upon the studies and methods of studies they should follow.”
What the students needed to do was to bone up on the law sufficiently to stand up to oral quizzing by members of the California Supreme Court. If they succeeded, they would be granted a license to practice in all of the courts of the state. Short of that, they could go before a Superior Court judge, be questioned, and, if evidencing sufficient legal knowledge, be admitted to practice in that county’s Superior Court.
Law students of 1889 generally would “read law” in an attorney’s office (typically being employed there in some menial capacity). They didn’t have the option of pouring over volumes at the Los Angeles County Law Library; it wouldn’t be established for three years. Nor could they resort to a correspondence course in law; according to a 1907 annual report of the American Bar Assn., no such course existed until 1900, when a correspondence school which included law studies started up in Detroit. (That correspondence school, a 1981 book, “The Roots of Justice,” says, “had 1,472 students in 1893; 70 of them lived in California.”)
Sessions of the Law Students’ Association added structure and focus to studies. Those sessions were held about once every two weeks in Van Dyke’s courtroom, located at New High and Franklin Streets. New High, a north-south street, still exists in Chinatown. It used to extend nearly to First Street, dead-ending at Franklin (or “Court Street”) which went from Fort Street (soon to be renamed “Broadway”) on the west to Spring Street on the east. The site of the courthouse is now part of City Hall.
Accounts in the Times reflect that on July 9, 1889, students were quizzed by a student “chairman” on law relating to marriage; on July 16, there was more quizzing on that topic, with about 20 students present; Los Angeles Superior Court Judge A.W. Hutton spoke on Aug. 6 on real property, with all of the seats of the courtroom filled; on Aug. 20, that riveting topic, “Remainders and Reversions” was discussed by Los Angeles attorney Thomas Mitchell; “Conveyances” was the topic of a Sept. 4 talk by Albert M. Stephens, who had served as a judge of the erstwhile County Court.
A Sept. 24, 1889 article in the Times starts out:
“Los Angeles is to be well supplied with lawyers in the future if the crop now coming on in the Law Students’ Association is any indication. There are now about fifty members in that organization, and the number is constantly increasing. Seven or eight expect to try the examinations before the Supreme Court next month.”
The article goes on to say:
“The association is doing much toward taking the place of the law college which Los Angeles should have by all means.
“The failure to obtain a sufficient number of students to warrant the establishment of a law department at the University of Southern California should in no wise discourage those interested in the plan to found such a college in Los Angeles.
“The number of students in the association shows conclusively that an independent institution of that kind, if located in the center of the city and well endowed and equipped, would attract a large number of students, not only from this city but from surrounding towns as well.”
The bi-weekly lectures continued. An item in the Los Angeles Express on Jan. 14, 1890, says: “Col. George H. Smith begins the first of his course of lectures before the Law Students’ Association on, ‘The Law of Private Right.’ ” Smith assumed a role akin to that of a faculty member, delivering a series of 20 lectures on the law.
This added considerable prestige to the project. So well regarded was Smith that the Los Angeles Bar Assn., on motion of Van Dyke, on March 13, 1887, voted to urge his appointment to a vacancy in the office of chief justice.
Smith, a former state senator and ex-reporter of decisions, was to become one of the original trustees of the Los Angeles Law School in 1897, and would serve as California Supreme Court commissioner—a post that existed prior to creation of the District Court of Appeals—and was appointed to the DCA when it opened shop in 1905.
When Smith began his 1890 lecture series, the venue had shifted to the courtroom of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William P. Wade.
“Members of the legal profession in Los Angeles have for some time been agitating the idea of establishing a law college in Southern California,” an article appearing in the Feb. 24, 1890 issue of the Express recites. It notes that “[t]he subject was referred to a special committee of the Bar Association of Los Angeles.” The story relates that the committee had concluded in its report was that it was high time for a law school to be opened in Los Angeles, recommending that there be at least a modest beginning the next September.
Five leading members of the bar—including Lieutenant Gov. Stephen M. White, a past Los Angeles County district attorney and future U.S. senator, and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lucien Shaw, a future chief justice of California—signed the report.
There was “a large number of young men in the city who are studying law” and the Law Students’ Association, though of utility, was “inadequate for the purposes intended,” the report says. It adds that the population of Southern California was already substantial; that the climate here would attract students from other parts of the state, especially with expenses being less here than in San Francisco; that funding could doubtlessly be obtained through financial contributions from “wealthy and public spirited citizens” and from tuition.
The bar association should proceed to form a committee to incorporate a law school, the report urges.
In delivering a talk on the law of sales before the law students’ group on Feb. 28, White called for support for the project. A report that night in the Express says:
“…Mr. White complimented the students on their work in organizing themselves for study. He referred to the great advantages of studying in association and the difficulties of studying alone.…The organization of the Law Students’ Association had suggested the idea of a Law College in Los Angeles, which Mr. White predicted would be one of our most successful institutions and would serve to advance both the character of our bench and bar.”
The association continued pulling in top lecturers. The April 8, 1890 issue of the Oakland Tribune notes that California Supreme Court Justice Charles N. Fox was coming down from San Francisco to address the students.
Bishop C.H. Fowler of the Episcopal Methodist Church delivered remarks at a June 27, 1890 ceremony commemorating the founding of USC (then a Methodist school) 10 years earlier. A report the next day in the Times quotes him as saying:
“We want to add a great law school to the university. If there is a point of danger in our Government it is the Supreme Court which has revolutionized the country by a single decision. A high-toned and honorable supreme bench is impossible without a high-toned and honorable bar. I am glad you are soon to have a new law school.”
It was not to happen “soon.” It would be 10 years before USC would be linked with Los Angeles Law School. Within that decade, a law school in the City of Los Angeles would come into existence, but perish; one would nearly be formed in Pasadena; one would open in Oakland, then move to San Francisco, and endure into the 1920s; law students’ groups with regular lectures would be formed elsewhere in the state; and an undergraduate law department would be established in Palo Alto featuring lectures by the immediate past president of the United States.
It is simply not true that, as declared by USC’s dean in 1930, “[u]ntil 1896 there was no organized effort at law instruction in Southern California and the only law school in the whole of California was the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco.”
In the next column, I’ll continue with this correction.
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