Litigation

Cal. Litig. 2023, Volume 35, Issue 3

THE HASTINGS COLLEGE OF THE LAW NAME CHANGE: THE REAL DEAL ABOUT THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Written by Kris Whitten*

On February 1, 2022, the Los Angeles County Bar Association hosted an online panel discussion titled: "Hastings Name Change: The Good, Bad and the Ugly." By signing Assembly Bill (AB) 1936 on September 23, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom has now authorized changing the school’s name, and here is how bad and ugly that really is.

The founding of University of California, Hastings College of the Law was based upon a contract entered into between Serranus Clinton Hastings and the State of California. (See Foltz v. Hoge (1879) 54 Cal. 28, citing Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) 17 U.S. 518, 668-669 [counsel’s argument in, describing Hastings’s agreement as "a complete contract between Hastings and the State[,] a private eleemosynary perpetual trust . . . ."].)

Hastings left New York in 1834, and in 1837 settled in what later became the Iowa Territory and, in 1846, the State of Iowa. There, he was appointed a justice of the peace, served in the territorial Legislature, as a member of the new State’s first contingent of United States Congressmen, and in 1848 became Iowa’s Chief Justice. He came to California with the Gold Rush, thereafter, amassing a fortune primarily by acquiring and selling land. In late 1849, he was appointed California’s first Chief Justice and in 1851 was elected its third Attorney General.

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