When the School of Law at Santa Clara College opened its doors in September 1911, it was a rather modest affair: There were two lectures a day (at 2:30 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.), three law classes, and four part-time faculty—three of them judges. The course of study leavened theory with some good-ol’ American emphasis on practice; it was open to college graduates as well as men with at least two years of undergrad schooling, with programs extended to “gifted young men … [in] possession of a legal mind.”
However, this wasn’t the beginning of law being taught at Santa Clara. For a few years already, there had been instruction in elementary law, an area of study seen as a natural fit for a Jesuit college with an emphasis on teaching ethics. But opening the law school was a step toward transforming the college into “a great Catholic University,” as then-President James P. Morrissey, S.J., described the aspirations.
Opening the law school was a step toward transforming the college into
“a great Catholic University.”
As for that beginning: Members of the first class of law school grads included Roy A. Bronson, who co-founded a 200-lawyer San Francisco firm; Frank B. Boone, who served with the Interallied Food Commission in Paris; Christopher A. Degnan and Harry McGowan, both district attorneys; and Dion R. Holm, a San Francisco city attorney. So it’s fair to say that the law school earned early on a slogan it adopted years later, and carries today: lawyers who lead.
As the law school approaches the beginning of its second century, a few statistics illuminate the legal educational landscape on the Mission Campus: More than 900 students are