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In My Opinion
Changing the Name of Hastings College of Law—Who Was Behind It?
By Kristian Whitten
(The writer is a member of UC Hastings’ Class of 1973 and a retired California deputy attorney general.)
With the recent heavy rains and flooding in San Francisco has come foreboding at the former Hastings College of the Law that the ghost of California’s first chief justice and the law school’s former namesake, Serranus Clinton Hastings, is haunting the Cotchett Law Center.
Local media reported that the building flooded on March 20, causing the last-minute cancelation of classes for many students. The flooded classrooms may reopen soon.
There have been numerous other problems with the new building, causing one student to suggest that the huge amount of money being spent to change the school’s name to UC College of the Law, San Francisco is a waste of resources.
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The building is named for Joseph Cotchett, a graduate of the law school’s Class of 1964, who paid millions of dollars to have his name put on the new Law Center. But when the New York Times ran a front-page article written by its San Francisco bureau chief claiming that Serranus Hastings masterminded the hunting and killing of Native Americans in the 1850s, Cotchett stated publicly that he would do “everything in my power” to change the law school’s name. He said that if it wasn’t changed, he’d pull his name from the Law Center, and made no secret of his pressuring the school’s Board of Directors and dean to change the name.
Within days, the law school’s dean and Board of Directors reversed their position that had been reached after several years of study and debate not to change the school’s name, and the dean was directed to work with the Legislature and governor to change the name. That is because the legislative form of the 1878 contract between Serranus Hastings and the State of California would at a minimum require legislative action to change its name.
Cotchett has long been a major campaign donor and power in the Democratic Party, a political appointee of prior Governors, and a business partner of current Gov. Gavin Newsom. He has been recently endorsed by Newsom in advertisements, and praised as well by other Democratic luminaries such as former U.S. Rep. Jackie Spier and former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.
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Finding political support and sponsors for the legislation was easy, and included Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown (UC Hastings Class of 1958), Sen. Thomas Umberg (UC Hastings Class of 1980), and former Assembly Speaker and Senate Majority Leader Robert Hertzberg (UC Hastings Class of 1979). They also convinced Assemblyman James Ramos, the first and only Native American serving in the state Legislature and Chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Native American Affairs, to sponsor the bill in the Assembly.
The name-change vote also mobilized alumni and faculty, who discovered that there is no substantial evidence credibly implicating Serranus Hastings in the 1850s wrongful acts of others, and that a legislative investigation in 1860, which included testimony from Hastings and others, did not find him culpable in any of those atrocities.
Under the direction of Ramos, the legislative process also mobilized Indian tribes and their supporters to seek an Indigenous name for the school, which at the end of a long and tortured process, culminated in the simultaneous reading and adoption of a unanimous resolution of the law school’s Board of Directors, which made it obvious that the new name had been a “done deal” from the start: UC College of the Law, San Francisco.
Shortly after that, Ramos tried one last time to salvage some Native American recognition in the law school’s new name, but that was quickly “corrected” by the dean and his Sacramento lobbyists. AB 1936 was signed by Newsom in a ceremony where he was surrounded by descendants of California’s Indigenous People. On December 16, 2022 Ramos was appointed chair of the Assembly Rules Committee.
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Then a lawsuit was filed by a group of UC Hastings alumni and several heirs of Serranus Hastings alleging, inter alia, that the name-change and the removal of the Hastings family’s ancestral seat on the law school’s Board of Directors required by AB 1936 violate the federal and state constitutions.
Almost immediately, the college’s counsel filed a motion to “strike” the lawsuit as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, Code of Civil Procedure §425.16 et seq. (anti-SLAPP), alleging that it is “masquerade[ing] as [an] ordinary lawsuit[] but [is] brought to deter common citizens from exercising their political or legal rights.”
Under that statute, all other proceedings on the merits come to a halt until the motion is finally resolved. The Superior Court has denied the motion, but the college appealed, so the matter remains stayed while the Court of Appeal considers its decision.
In the meantime, the State Bar suddenly and without prior notice amended its public website to say that all UC Hastings alumni graduated from: “UC College of the Law, San Francisco.” After numerous alumni complained, it changed the listings back to indicate we graduated from UC Hastings, explaining that: “[o]ur practice has been to include the name of the law school at the time an attorney graduated.”
But a few days later the institution was again listed as UC College of the Law, San Francisco, accompanied by an admission that the State Bar has no written policy on how to handle law school name changes. We are told that the State Bar staff intends to submit a proposal on the subject to its trustees later this year.
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The State Bar is currently under fire because some of its employees corruptly bent themselves to the wishes of a rich and powerful lawyer.
Umberg, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says that he finds the State Bar’s recent reports “shocking in the lack of transparency and oversight and conflicts of interest that were not addressed.” He has authored legislation to address shortcomings he sees in its oversight of California’s lawyers.
But in speaking to AB 1936 on the floor of the state Senate, Umberg, himself a powerful attorney who recently obtained a noteworthy $47 million verdict from a Sonoma County jury, denied the importance of investigating the historical record (e.g. the 1860 investigation), relying instead on the New York Times and one historian’s narrative of 1850s events, in concluding: “the issue is...no longer debatable...[t]here is no reasonable doubt that Serranus Hastings engaged, involved, participated in the funding of this genocidal activity.”
Juxtapose his conclusion with that of a committee of the law school’s Board of Directors which, after studying a more complete record, determined that “there is no incontrovertible proof that Judge Hastings knew more than he acknowledged.”
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One wonders, given the State Bar staff’s recent record of bowing to powerful lawyers, and the undeniable fact that since AB 1936 went into effect no one has yet graduated from the law school, if it would be a good idea to investigate who and/or what triggered the State Bar’s sudden redesignation of us as graduates of UC College of the Law, San Francisco?
Whatever the outcome, can there be any doubt that the legacy and spirit of Serranus Clinton Hastings lives on among alumni and others at the law college he paid the State $100,000 in gold coin to “found and establish?”
(Commenting on the portion of the article making reference to him, Cotchett says: “We are very proud of the new building as it is an LED environmentally new building and unfortunately the water tank in the basement overflowed causing the flood, which I am advised has been fixed. It is an outstanding building for students and hopefully will be the pioneer for many other buildings.”)
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