California Legal History: Selected Titles from the Hastings Law Library Collection

This display features titles from the Hastings Law Library collection involving developments in California legal history. Primary source materials, treatises on the history of the law, and biographies of those who made early California law, are presented in the display. The three sub-themes of the display are:

• LEGISLATURE
• COURT
• BENCH AND BAR

Titles related to the Legislature include the Report of the Debates in the Convention of California on the Formation of the State Constitution, in September and October, 1849 and the minutes from the 1879 Constitutional Convention. Early laws are also included in the display. The Compiled Laws of the State of California was one of the first compilations of California statutes published before the codes were adopted. The first codes are represented by Revised Laws of the State of California: in Four Codes, which were proposed codes for California with annotations to the New York codes. The first California codes were influenced by the New York codes, which had been compiled by the New York Code Commission under David Dudley Field. These are commonly referred to as "the Field codes".

Statutes of California 1851

Titles related to the Court include volumes of the reporters that proceeded the California Official Reports. The display also includes a copy of Rules of Practice in the Supreme Court of California: Adopted at the June Term, 1850. These were the first rules of practice for any court in California.

Titles related to the Bench and Bar are photographic directories of California attorneys, and biographies of prominent figures in the practice of law in early California. On display from the Hastings Historical Archives collection are handwritten notes taken by the secretary of the Resumption of the Judiciary Committee, which was formed following the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco.

We hope you get a chance to visit the Library and enjoy the California Legal History display. You may also be interested in the Library's display on John Norton Pomeroy.