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State Bar Trustees Approve Resolution on Law School Names
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Lawyers whose diplomas recite attendance at “Hastings College of Law”—now known as the “University of California College of Law, San Francisco”—will apparently have the former name of their alma mater included on their “attorney profiles” on the State Bar website, under an action yesterday by the Board of Trustees.
The trustees voted 9-1 to approve a resolution which reads:
“RESOLVED, that the Board of Trustees adopts a law school name change policy wherein, unless retroactive application is required explicitly by statute or by order of the Supreme Court, law school name changes will only be reflected on the attorney profile page prospectively—to licensees who graduate after the effective date of the name change; and it is
“FURTHER RESOLVED, while this policy should be applied to the attorney profile page of graduates of all law schools that changed their name, including those that occurred previously, if correcting the law school on the attorney profile page of licensees that graduated prior to the effective date of name changes that previously occurred proves exceedingly difficult or unduly time consuming or expensive, staff have discretion to apply this policy only to future law school name changes.”
A staff report said that during a 60-day public comment period, 986 responses to the proposed resolution were received, of which 61.73 percent—totaling 608—being favorable. It notes that most of those comments came from graduates of Hastings, as well as from what was known as Boalt Hall, now termed the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
Serranus Clinton Hastings, California’s first chief justice, is believed by some scholars to have committed atrocities against Native Americans, though he was exonerated at an 1860 proceeding. John Henry Boalt was repudiated based on having favored exclusion of the Chinese from the U.S.
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