The University of California, Hastings College of the Law (UC Hastings or Hastings) is a public law school in San Francisco, California, located in the Civic Center neighborhood. It is affiliated with the UC system, although it is not directly governed by the Regents of the University of California. The other UC campus dedicated to graduate education only, the University of California, San Francisco, is also located in San Francisco.
Founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, the first Chief Justice of California, it was the first law school of the University of California and was one of the first law schools established in the Western United States. It is also one of the few university-affiliated law schools in the United States that does not share its campus with undergraduates or other graduate programs.
History
Building UC Hastings - Join us in shaping the future of San Francisco's preeminent legal institution. Learn more at http://building.uchastings.edu/.
Hastings had a unique relationship with the University of California. In 1878, when Supreme Court of California Justice Serranus Clinton Hastings gave $100,000 to the University of California to start the law school bearing his name, he imposed two conditions: the school must remain in San Francisco near the courts; and it could not be governed by the Regents of the University of California. Thus the school's leader (who holds the dual titles of chancellor and dean) must obtain funds directly from the California State Legislature, unlike other UC institutions, which receive money from the Regents. In a commencement address, Hastings called his school "a temple of law and intellect, which shall never perish, until, in the lapse of time, civilization shall cease, and this fair portion of our country shall be destroyed or become a desert."
In 1900, it became one of 27 charter members of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS).
Hastings College of the Law was for many years considered the primary law school of the University of California with the purpose of preparing lawyers for the practice of law in the state, whereas the Department of Legal Jurisprudence on the Berkeley campus, which later became Boalt Hall School of Law (now styled Berkeley Law), was intended for the study of law as an academic discipline.
In the 1960s, Hastings began the "65 Club," the practice of hiring faculty who had been forced into mandatory retirement at age 65 from Ivy League and other élite institutions. After the passage of age discrimination laws, however, the "65 Club" slowly phased out, and Hastings hired its last "65 Club" professor in 1998. In the mid-1950s, Newsweek published a story where then Harvard Law School dean and jurist Roscoe Pound declared, referring to UC Hastings: "Indeed, on the whole, I am inclined to think you have the strongest law faculty in the nation."
Location
UC Hastings campus spreads among three main buildings located near San Francisco's Civic Center: 200 McAllister Street houses academic space and administrative offices, 198 McAllister contains mainly classrooms and faculty offices, and 100 McAllister, known casually as "The Tower", contains university office and student housing, as well as the Art Deco "Sky Room" on the 24th floor.
The campus is within walking distance of the Muni Metro and Bay Area Rapid Transit Civic Center/UN Plaza station. UC Hastings is commonly but affectionately derided by students and alums as being located in the ugliest corner of the most beautiful city in the world. Indeed, the school has been referred to in jest as "UC Tenderloin."
Located within a two-block radius of the campus is the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the California Supreme Court, the California Court of Appeal for the First District, San Francisco Superior Court, San Francisco City Hall, United Nations Plaza (and Federal Building Annex), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the Main Library of the San Francisco Public Library system. The heavy concentration of public buildings within the Civic Center, as well as the high crime rate, result in heavy police presence, and high security, around UC Hastings.
Organization and structure
UC Hastings is managed by a nine-member Board of Directors. The UC Hastings Board of Directors exists independently of, and is not controlled by, the Regents of the University of California. Pursuant to California law, eight of the directors are appointed by the Governor of California. Pursuant to the UC Hastings constitutive documents, the ninth director must be a direct lineal descendant of UC Hastings founder Clinton Serranus Hastings. The Hastings family member now serving on the board is Claes H. Lewenhaupt.
UC Hastings' detachment from the UC Regents gives it a broad degree of independence in shaping educational and fiscal policies; however, due to a shrinking California education budget, Hastings must also compete for limited educational funds against its fellow UC campuses. Despite the apparent competition among the UC law schools, Hastings was able to maintain its traditionally high standards without having to decrease class size or raise tuition to higher levels than fellow UC law schools, until the California budget crisis in June 2009, first raised the possibility of slashing $10 million in state funding.
A few days later, however, lawmakers rejected the harsh budget cut, agreeing to cut only $1 million and apparently preventing dramatic tuition hikes.
Under California law, if the government ever cuts funding to Hastings to below the 19th-century figure of $7,000 a year, the state must return the $100,000, plus interest, to the Hastings family. State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) has argued that the rejected $10 million budget cut, in abandoning state financial support for the school, would have allowed the Hastings family to launch an expensive court fight to reclaim the $100,000 plus hefty interest.
Academics
Hastings offers a three-year Juris Doctor program with concentrated studies available in seven areas: civil litigation, criminal law, international law, public interest law, taxation, family law, and recently, a new concentration in intellectual property law. Most J.D. students follow a traditional three-year plan. During the first year, students take required courses as well as one elective course. In the second and third years, students may take any course or substitute or supplement their courses with judicial externships or internships, judicial clinics, or study abroad. The college also offers a one-year LL.M. degree in U.S. legal studies for students holding law degrees from foreign law programs. It is an American Bar Association (ABA) approved law school since 1939.
Hastings participates in the Concurrent Degree Program with U.C. Berkeley's Haas Graduate School of Business. Upon completion of a four-year program, the student earns a Berkeley M.B.A. degree and a J.D. degree from UC Hastings College of the Law.
UC Hastings College of the Law and the UCSF School of Medicine of the University of California, San Francisco have commenced a joint degree program, and in 2011 began enrolling their first class of graduate students in the Master of Studies in Law (MSL) and LL.M. in Law, Science and Health Policy programs. Students have coursework available at each institution for fulfillment of the degrees. This program is a component of the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science and Health Policy.
A joint program, the first of its kind in the University of California system, enables UC Santa Cruz students to earn an undergraduate and law degree in six years instead of the usual seven. The “3+3 BA/JD†Program between UC Santa Cruz and UC Hastings admitted its first applicants in Fall 2014.
UCSC students who declare their intent in their freshman or early sophomore year will complete three years at UCSC and then move on to UC Hastings to begin the three-year law curriculum. Credits from the first year of law school will count toward a student's bachelor's degree. Students who successfully complete the first-year law course work will receive their bachelor's degree, graduate with their UCSC class, then continue at UC Hastings for the final two years of law study.
UC Hastings has a chapter of the Order of the Coif, a national law school honorary society founded for the purposes of encouraging legal scholarship and advancing the ethical standards of the legal profession. It joined the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) as a charter member in 1900; it renewed its membership in 1949.
Costs
The total cost of attendance (indicating the cost of tuition, fees, and living expenses) at UC Hastings for the 2014â€"2015 academic year is $71,247 for California residents and $77,247 for non-residents. The Law School Transparency estimated debt-financed cost of attendance for three years is $296,028.
Employment outcomes and rankings
Post-graduation employment
According to UC Hastings official 2013 ABA-required disclosures, 41.6% of the Class of 2013 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment nine months after graduation, excluding solo-practitioners. UC Hastings Law School Transparency under-employment score is 47.2%, indicating the percentage of the Class of 2013 unemployed, pursuing an additional degree, or working in a non-professional, short-term, or part-time job nine months after graduation.
Rank
U.S. News & World Report ranks Hastings 50th among top law schools in the US and as the most diverse of the five law schools in the UC system. It was listed with a "B+" in the March 2011 "Diversity Honor Roll" by The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students. UC Hastings also has the largest student body and student/faculty ratio of the UC law schools.
In January 2011, UC Hastings was given a "B" in the "Best Public Interest Law Schools" listing by The National Jurist: The Magazine for Law Students.
In 2009, Super Lawyers magazine ranked UC Hastings 11th in terms of law schools that produced the most "Super Lawyers".
According to Brian Leiter's law school rankings, Hastings ranks 27th in the nation in terms of scholarly impact as measured by academic citations of tenure-stream faculty, on par with USC. In terms of student quality, Hastings ranks 33rd in the nation by average LSAT score.
According to the Web site "Law School Advocacy," UC Hastings had the No. 1 Moot Court program in the country in 2011, with Top 5 rankings in each of the last five years.
A 2013 article in Forbes Magazine ranks Hastings 20th among 'The 25 Law Schools Whose Grads Earn The Most'.
Bar passage rates
In 2014, 68% of Hastings Law graduates taking the test for the first time passed the California State Bar.
Publications
Journals
The oldest law journal at UC Hastings is the Hastings Law Journal, which was founded in 1949. The second oldest journal is the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, which was founded in 1973. Inaugurated in 1997 to oversee the growing number of publications at UC Hastings, the O'Brien Center for Scholarly Publications now manages the publication of the nine UC Hastings journals.
- Hastings Law Journal
- Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly
- Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal
- Hastings Women's Law Journal
- Hastings International and Comparative Law Review
- Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal
- West-Northwest Journal of Environmental Law and Policy
- Hastings Science & Technology Law Journal
- Hastings Business Law Journal
Books
The O'Brien Center at UC Hastings has published several books:
- Forgive Us Our Press Passes, by Daniel Schorr
- The Traynor Reader: Essays, by the Honorable Roger Traynor.
- Hastings College of the Law â€" The First Century, a centennial history of the UC Hastings commissioned by the UC Hastings Board in 1973
Notable people
Some of the notable people affiliated with UC Hastings include Governor of Nevada Richard Bryan, US Senator Kamala Harris, Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett, former U.S. Congressman Chip Pashayan, U.S. Congresswoman Jackie Speier, California Supreme Court Associate Justice Wiley Manuel
and The Sharper Image founder Richard Thalheimer.
In popular culture
- Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case, arose from events at UC Hastings in 2003.
See also
- San Francisco Bay Area portal
- University portal
References
External links
- Official website
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