It seems to be human nature to hope we will be remembered after we die, so it is no surprise that many college campuses feature buildings that bear the names of affluent individuals whose donations were intended to preserve their memory.
But what happens if, decades later, it turns out that the person the institution agreed to honor in perpetuity is no longer seen as quite so honorable, and the school wants to end the deal? That was the issue recently presented to the California Court of Appeal (Hastings College Conservation Committee v State of California.)
Serranus Clinton (S.C.) Hastings was born in New York in 1814. After a brief stint as a teacher, he studied law and moved to the Iowa District of the Wisconsin Territory, where he became a justice of peace. In the sole case he decided, he sentenced a man who stole $33 to be tied to an oak tree and given 33 lashes. He was elected to the Iowa territorial assembly at the age of 24, and eight years later to the House of Representatives.
After his first year in Congress, he resigned to move to California, settling in Benicia. In 1849 the legislature named him Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, and in 1851 he was elected Attorney General. In his new post he could practice law, which as Chief Justice he could not, and his very successful legal practice made him a wealthy man.
He invested in real estate, including large plots of land in Round Valley in Mendocino County that had been home to the indigenous Yuki people. A law then in effect in California permitted the kidnapping and enslavement of Native Americans in the state. More than 1,000 Yuki in the valley are estimated to have been killed between 1856 and 1859, with others enslaved; only 300 survived.
In 1878, S.C. Hastings, by then one of the largest landowners in the state, persuaded the legislature to approve the founding of the first law school on the West Coast. The resulting bill authorized him “to found and establish a Law College, to be forever known and designated as ‘Hastings’ College of the Law.’”
It also provided that the school would be governed by a board of directors which would reserve one seat for an heir or representative of the Hastings family. S.C. Hastings agreed to deposit $100,000 in the state treasury, which would then pay $7,000 annually to the directors to fund the school.
The law school later became part of the University of California, San Francisco. It grew rapidly in enrollment and reputation after World War II, initially when veterans used the G.I. Bill to fund their legal studies.
In 2017, a professor at the school published an essay arguing for the renaming of the school. It called Hasting a “promoter and financier of Indian-hunting expeditions in the 1850s” whose wealth came from land acquired “by the massacre of the rightful claimants.”
After a three-year study, a commission established by the school acknowledged Hastings’ genocidal acts but said a name change “could lead to public confusion” causing a decline in applications and a loss of philanthropic and alumni support.
The controversy was the focus of an article in the New York Times the following year. This led the directors of the school to reverse their position and vote for a name change, to University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. The renaming was approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom, effective Jan. 1, 2023.
Descendants of S.C. Hastings sued the school directors and the state a few months before the name change was to take effect. They asked the San Francisco Superior Court to block the change, arguing among several points that the statute establishing the school – and reserving one director spot for a Hastings family representative – was a valid, binding contract.
Supporters of the name change argued that the state legislature did not intend to bind itself contractually when it approved the establishment of the school, and even if it did, it lacked the authority to do so because a state “cannot bargain away” its right to regulate public matters, including its authority to manage a public institution like the college.
The trial court ruled against the representatives of the Hastings family. It agreed that a legislature cannot create a law that future legislatures cannot change. “Every succeeding legislature possesses the same jurisdiction and power…as its predecessors,” it said. For that reason, “It is vital to the public welfare that each one should be able at all times to do what the varying circumstances and present exigencies touching the subject may require.”
The family appealed but was equally unsuccessful at the appellate level. The appellate justices noted that “a state government may not contract away an essential attribute of its sovereignty,” which here was its authority to manage a public entity: the law school, established as a public institution affiliated with the University of California. That authority included the powers to change the school’s name and to remove the hereditary board seat, the justices said.
They affirmed the ruling of the trial court and awarded the defendants – the State of California – their costs.
By Michael C. Agran