Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
Kent Law School: Origins of Obscure but Long-Lived Institution Uncovered
By ROGER M. GRACE
In the history of early legal education in California, just where does the Kent Law School fit in?
The 1981 book, “The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910” by Lawrence M. Friedman and Robert V. Percival, says:
“The Kent Law School, founded in San Francisco in 1891, moved to Oakland after the [1906] earthquake.”
Alfred Zantzinger Reed’s “Present-Day Law Schools in the United States and Canada,” published in 1928, says in a footnote:
“The Kent Law School of San Francisco…was started in 1892, and was still in existence as late as 1924.”
But was there actually a “Kent Law School” in San Francisco as early as 1891 or 1892? I became skeptical of that in finding that there’s no reference in the early 1890s to any such law school in the San Francisco city directories, and no reference to it in San Francisco newspaper archives.
Friedman and Percival, in a footnote, cite “Alameda Daily Argus, Jan. 16, 1908, p. 6, col. 2” for their proposition. A member of our Sacramento staff looked up that issue on microfilm at the California State Library and sent me a print-out of the page; there’s no reference to any law school. Percival, a professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law, acknowledges in an e-mail “that it looks like we cited the wrong newspaper.”
There are, however, ads appearing in January, 1908 issues of the San Francisco Call which boast of Kent Law School’s “sixteenth year.” In the Aug. 30 issue of the Call in 1908, the ad now says it’s the school’s 17th year, while an ad nine days earlier still proclaims it to be the 16th year. Arithmetically, that indicates the school was founded in late August, 1892. (Sixteen, not 17, would be subtracted from 1908; the 17th year commences once the school reaches 16 years of existence.)
But statements in ads and other vehicle of self-promotion obviously aren’t proof of the claims.
There is no doubt that the school did exist in San Francisco in the early 1900s…and those who knew of the school were apt to associate it instantly with its president, attorney John Goss. Doing research on Goss sheds light.
Goss’ name is found in several 1898 issues of the Oakland Tribune. It appears in ads for a brand of typewriter. The ads read:
“From constant use in my business, I can fully and unreservedly recommend ‘the Yost’ typewriter for the rapidity and accuracy of its work. John Goss, President Oakland Law School.”
So, he operated a law school in Oakland prior to the earthquake.
Does the Oakland Law School go back to 1892? No. Ads in late August of 1897 in the Oakland Tribune announce that school’s beginning: “OAKLAND LAW SCHOOL opens Sept. 1, 1897 Blake & Moffitt building.”
Two years later, Goss opened a second location in San Francisco. A Sept. 6, 1899 ad in the San Francisco Call reads: “LAW Schools, 927 Market, S.F., and 905 Broadway, Oakland; day and night; correspondence.” Both the Oakland and San Francisco directories list Goss as an attorney and “manager” of a law school.
As of the new schoolyear in the fall of 1900, ads show that Kent Law School was operating at 748 Market Street in San Francisco (for information, “phone Jessie 1606”); neither “Oakland Law School” nor an Oakland branch of Kent is mentioned in directories for that year or in ads. (A Nov. 5, 1900 ad in the San Francisco Call reflects an added inducement to enroll: “Latin taught free.”)
An April 12, 1906 classified ad in the San Francisco Chronicle shows that Kent Law School was located in the Parrott Building, at Montgomery and California Streets. The devastating San Francisco earthquake began on April 18, 1906. The building, damaged but not severely, was shuttered.
Businesses that had operated in now-demolished or otherwise inaccessible structures advertised in the classified section of newspapers as to where they had set up temporary shop. In the Chronicle’s April 29 edition there is found an ad that advises: “JOHN GOSS’ AND KENT LAW SCHOOL, 539 Birch ave.; near Octavia.” That was Goss’ home address in San Francisco.
Issues of the Oakland Tribune, starting May 19, include this ad:
That ad was replaced on May 28 with this one, which ran over the next few days:
“Justices Samuels and Geary” were Oakland Police Court Judge George Samuels, who later became a Superior Court judge, and Justice of the Peace William R. Geary of Brooklyn Township, an unsuccessful Alameda district attorney candidate in 1910 and a losing candidate for Congress on the Progressive ticket in 1914. Both had graduated from Oakland Law School.
The Oakland branch closed later that year. Although the Parrott Building was quickly reopened, Goss did not return there. He continued to operate the San Francisco school out of his home until moving to the Phelan Building in January, 1909. (Evening classes were held at different locations in 1909-11.)
Goss remained in the Phelan Building until the school ceased operating in 1924. By then, he was living in Mill Valley.
It appears that Kent did have a meaningful program. I glean that from “Who’s Whos” and newspaper articles referring to graduates. Five who obtained diplomas from Kent (it isn’t clear if it conferred law degrees) and became city attorneys were William Henry Johnson, San Jose (who went into law practice with Goss); Edward Rowe Jones, Modesto; Richard Felix Robertson, Los Gatos; Frank B. Graves, Hanford; Frank Emmett Kilpatrick, also in Hanford. Other graduates who went into public service were LeRoy E. Bailey, a Municipal Court judge in Madera; John J. Harper, who abandoned law practice to become chief of police in Burlingame; Manuel F. Sylva, assistant district attorney in San Francisco; Peter George McIver, justice of the peace in Redlands; and H.B. Duncan, special assistant to the United States district attorney for the Southern District of California.
An ad in the Oct. 19, 1902 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle ballyhoos that “KENT Law School has nine graduates on the judicial ticket.”
A puzzling entry in “History of the Bench and Bar of California” (1912) by Joseph Clement Bates is the one for Charles W. Davison, the mayor of San Jose and a former Justice Court judge there. It says he attended “Kent Law School, San Jose, California, 1894-95.” A misprint? The same information appears in “Who’s Who on the Pacific Coast” (1913) edited by Franklin Harper.
A May 29, 1896 San Francisco Chronicle story, datelined San Jose, makes reference to “Attorney John Goss.” Hmm. Could it be that Goss operated a law school in San Jose?
The Los Angeles Public Library doesn’t have city directories for San Jose in the 1890s. San Jose State University’s King Library does. I was saved a trip to San Jose by research librarian Lauren Miranda Gilbert who graciously searched the directories for me. By phone, she advises that Goss is listed in 1893 as an “attorney at law”; 1894 as “attorney and proprietor, San Jose Law School”; 1895 as “President, San Jose Law School,” and 1896 as “President, San Jose Evening Law School.”
Although there’s no listing for Goss in the 1892 directory, he could have hung out his shingle in San Jose too late to be included in that year’s directory—but that doesn’t explain why the law school isn’t listed in the 1893 directory if it did, indeed, begin in 1892. Or was Goss tutoring in law, before denominating his undertaking a “school”?
Again, I got some help with my research. There are seemingly no copies of the San Jose Mercury for 1892 on microfilm in libraries in Los Angeles County, but they are available at the California State Library. Metropolitan News Company regional manager Ted Gallagher found a spate of classified ads placed by Goss in 1892 in which he advertised himself as a lawyer and added: “Instruction given in law and eloquence.”
It’s seen that Kent Law School was not established in San Francisco in 1891 or 1892. Its proprietor did begin teaching law in San Jose in 1892, moved his practice and his school to Oakland in 1897, and opening a school in San Francisco in 1899.
It might well be that Goss constituted the entire faculty of his various law schools. I’ve found no references to instructors there.
The Nov. 19, 1908 issue of the San Francisco Call seems to regard Kent as the alter ego of Goss, reporting:
“Thirty-six law students, graduates from Stanford and the University of California and pupils of John Goss were admitted to the bar yesterday afternoon after having passed an examination before the justices of the district court of appeal.”
Goss’ law school operations were small enough that he was able to operate out of his home for nearly three years. The attorney—born in 1850 in England, naturalized as a citizen in 1870—had a law school that was not prestigious, but endured for three decades or more and turned out students able to pass the oral bar exam and succeed in practice.
LAW SCHOOL CHRONOLOGY—Unless the San Jose Law School is simply dismissed—or there are others that haven’t come to light—it would appear to have been the third law school formed in the state. Hastings was first (1878); Southern California College of Law (1892) second; Goss, as a “law school,” third; Stanford fourth (1899), and USC fifth (1901). The YMCA Law School of San Francisco, which became Golden Gate, opened in 1901, and was sixth.
(The notion of a law school at a “Y” does seem comical. However, the school did offer substantially more than a bar review course. An article in the August 29, 1902 issue of the San Francisco Call mentions that the faculty the coming year would be an instructor from the law school at Stanford, one from the Department of Jurisprudence at Berkeley, and a graduate of Yale undergraduate school and Harvard Law School. The course of studies was four years.)
Coming in seventh is the law school at Berkeley—generally referred to as “Boalt Hall” though the University of California is edging away from that description. The name is based on the structure that housed the law department as of 1911. (There was a move to “New Boalt Hall” in 1951, a structure now denominated “Durant Hall.”) Although some sources list the law school at UC Berkeley as having been founded in 1894 or 1901, the true date was 1902. I’ll get into that next time.
USC LAW SCHOOL WASN’T HERE—Another retraction: the USC Law School was never here, in the Wilcox Building, home of the MetNews at the southeast corner of Second and Spring Streets.
Information I previously conveyed as to the law school having had tenancy in our building came from USC’s website (which includes a photo of the building). I’ve tracked down the source of USC’s misconception. The 1899 catalogue for the 1899-1900 school year of Los Angeles Law School, commonly thought to have been a forerunner of USC’s law school, showed a Wilcox Building address.
To begin with, Los Angeles Law School, as I’ve shown in a previous column, did not develop into the USC Law School—instead, dying in 1901. Moreover, the school’s dean, James Brown Scott, had his law office in the Wilcox Building, and the address must have been used for administrative purposes.
Classes were not held in the Wilcox Building. Both the morning Herald and the evening Express report in their Sept. 19, 1899 editions that the new school year for Los Angeles Law School would begin that night in the Potomac Block at 217 S. Broadway. That’s also the address listed for the law school in the 1898 and 1899 city directories.
The Potomac Block was on the west side of Broadway; it was across the street from the Public Library, now the site of a Los Angeles Times parking structure.
While the USC Law School was never a tenant in the Wilcox Building, USC’s undergraduate schools were. In 1954, USC classes in law enforcement, engineering and government were held here, according to a Times article.
Copyright 2009, Metropolitan News Company