University of Southern California Law School

USC Law School

The University of Southern California Law School (Gould School of Law), located in Los Angeles, California, is a graduate school within the University of Southern California. The oldest law school in the Southwestern United States, USC Law had its beginnings in 1896, and was officially established as a school of the university in 1904. It currently has about 600 J.D. students (200 per year), and also has a growing LL.M. program of about 90 students. The Law School 100, a ranking scheme that purports to use qualitative criteria instead of quantitative, ranks the law school fourteenth overall, tied with Duke, UCLA, and the University of Texas.^[5] The 2009 U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Graduate Schools" ranks USC Law School at number eighteen.

USC Law publishes three academic journals^[6]: Southern California Law Review, Interdisciplinary Law Journal, and Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice (formerly the Review of Law and Women's Studies).

History

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USC Law School had its beginnings in 1896 when Judge David C. Morrison opened his courtroom for 36 law apprentices, among them was future California Supreme Court Justice, Frederick W. Houser and his wife Sara Isabella Wilde, who later formed the Los Angeles Law Students Association, to discuss the concept of a formal law school. Their efforts resulted in the incorporation of the Los Angeles Law School in 1898. In 1900, the program became affiliated with the University of Southern California and the first law degree was awarded in 1901 to Gavin W. Craig. Over the next several decades, USC Law rose to become one of the most prominent national law schools, priding itself on an interdisciplinary form of study.

In 2002, the USC Law Graduate and International Programs was launched with an inaugural class of 12 students. Now the Master of Laws and Master of Comparative Law programs include 99 international students from dozens of countries on five continents. In 2004, The Initiative and Referendum Institute — the nation’s most prominent educational and research organization focused on direct democracy — moves to USC Law and joins the Center for the Study of Law and Politics.

As of 2007, the law school continues to build upon its tradition of interdisciplinary training with the addition of the Center in Law and Philosophy, Center in Law, Economics and Organization, and the Center in Law, History and Culture. The school also strives to offer its students practical experience through its clinics, which include the Post-Conviction Justice Project, Children's Legal Issues Clinic, and the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic.

Deans

• Frank M. Porter, 1904-1927
• Justin Miller, 1927-1930
• William G. Hale, 1930-1948
• Shelden Elliott, 1948-1952
• Robert Kingsley, 1952-1963
• Orrin B. Evans, 1963-1968
• Dorothy W. Nelson, 1968-1980
• Scott H. Bice, 1980-2000
• Matthew L. Spitzer, 2000-2006
• Edward J. McCaffery (interim dean), 2006-2007
• Robert K. Rasmussen, 2007-present

Notable faculty

• Jody Armour - specializes in race issues; author of Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism
• Alexander Capron - specializes in law and medicine
• Susan Estrich - Professor of Law and Political Science. A Fox News commentator, Professor Estrich is frequently asked to comment on political interest stories. As an author, most recently, she has published The Case for Hillary Clinton, 2005, and Soulless: The Right Wing Church of Hate, 2006. Estrich is a woman of firsts; she was the first woman to become Editor in Chief of the Harvard Law Review, the youngest woman to receive tenure from Harvard Law School (before leaving to teach at USC), and the first woman to ever run a Presidential campaign (Dukakis, 1988).
• Elizabeth Garrett - appointed to President Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform; USC Vice President of Academic Planning and Budget, Professor of Law, Political Science and Public Policy
• Carole E. Handler - Professor of antitrust and intellectual property law
• George Lefcoe - Real Estate expert. Author of the widely used, "Real Estate Transactions" textbook.
• Edward McCaffery - Tax expert
• Elyn Saks - expert on mental health law who has paranoid schizophrenia, author of The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
• Debra Wong Yang - trial advocacy expert; the first Asian American woman served as a United States Attorney
• Scott Bice - expert on federal courts; former dean of USC law school (1980-2000)

Former faculty

• Erwin Chemerinsky - former Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, and Political Science, 1983-2004; former professor at the Duke University School of Law; founding Dean at the University of California, Irvine School of Law
• Richard Epstein - well-known for his arguments against anti-discrimination laws; currently the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School
• James Brown Scott - authority on international law, founding dean of USC Law School
• Charles Whitebread - expert on Criminal Procedure and lecturer for BarBri; author of The Eight Secrets of Top Exam Performance in Law School

Notable alumni

Business

• C. Bertrand Thompson, 1900 - First African-American graduate of USC Law School at age 18, later a Unitarian minister, assistant to Frederick W. Taylor and early scholar of scientific management, lecturer at the Harvard Business School (1908-1917), international business consultant (awarded the French Légion d'honneur), and researcher in biochemistry
• Louis Galen, 1951 - former CEO of Golden West Financial, philanthropist
• Frank Rothman, 1951 - former chairman and CEO of MGM Studios and noted trial attorney
• Sol Price, 1957 - founder of Fed Mart and Price Club
• Walt Zifkin, 1961 - CEO Emeritus, William Morris Agency
• James Rogers, 1963 - CEO & owner, Sunbelt Communications
• Richard Ziman, 1967 - CEO, Arden Realty
• Stanley Gold, 1967 - President and CEO of Shamrock Holdings
• Bruce Karatz, 1970 - CEO of KB Home
• Larry Flax, 1971 - co-founder of California Pizza Kitchen
• Jeff Smulyan, 1972 - founder and CEO of Emmis Communications
• Charles Prince, 1975 - former chairman & CEO of Citigroup
• Alan Hoffman, 1991 - Chief of Staff for Senator Joe Biden; former Vice President of Timmons and Co.
• Richard Rosenblatt, 1994 - Founder, CEO, Intermix & Demand Media; former Chairman, MySpace; Founder, former CEO,iMALL

Law

• Litta Belle Hibbens Campbell, 1913 - first female deputy district attorney in the United States
• Mabel Walker Willebrandt, 1916 - Assistant U.S. Attorney General, 1921-1929
• You Chung Hong (1898-1977), 1924 - first Chinese American admitted to practice in California
• Elisha Avery Crary, 1929 - judge, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California , 1962-1966; judge, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 1966-1978
• Gordon Dean, 1930 - former USC Law School professor; chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
• Edwin Jefferson, 1931 - first African American judge west of Chicago
• Jack Carl Greenburg, 1933 - former Chief Clerk of California Assembly
• Walter Raleigh Ely, Jr., 1949 - judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1964-1984
• William P. Hogoboom, 1949 - former California Superior Court judge
• David Eagleson, 1950 - former California Supreme Court justice
• Arthur Lawrence Alarcon, 1951 - judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1979-
• Malcolm Millar Lucas, 1953 - judge, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 1971-1984
• David R. Thompson, 1955 - judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 1985-
• William Byrne, 1956 - former senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
• Dorothy Wright Nelson, 1956 - former USC Law Dean; Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Edward Rafeedie, 1959 - former judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
• Robert Mitsuhiro Takasugi, 1959 - first Japanese American United States federal judge
• Richard Arthur Gadbois Jr., 1960 - judge, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 1982-1996
• Ferdinand Francis Fernandez, 1962 - senior judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• J. Lawrence Irving, 1963 - judge, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California., 1982-1990
• Dickran Tevrizian, 1965 - United States federal judge for the Central District of California
• Mary Ann Cohen, 1967 - Judge of the United States Tax Court
• David Getches, 1967 - Dean and Raphael J. Moses Professor of Natural Resources Law at the University of Colorado School of Law
• Alicemarie Huber Stotler, 1967 - judge, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 1984-
• Ronald M. Whyte, 1967 - federal judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
• Scott Bice, 1968 - Dean of USC Law School from 1980-2000, Supreme Court Clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren. Board of Directors, Arena Pharmaceuticals.
• James P. Gray, 1971 - presiding judge of the Superior Court of Orange County; former Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate
• Stephen Cooley, 1973 - Los Angeles County's 36th District Attorney
• Joyce L. Kennard, 1974 - first female Asian American to serve as an associate justice on the California Supreme Court
• Nora Manella, 1975 - U.S. District Court Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
• Douglas Kmiec, 1976 - U.S. AmbassadorCaruso Family Chair in Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University,fmr. U.S. Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, fmr. Dean and St. Thomas More Professor, The Catholic University of America, fmr. Director of Law & Government Center, University of Notre Dame
• Margaret Radin, 1976 - influential law professor at Stanford Law School; former USC Law School professor
• Matthew Spitzer, 1977 - Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law and Political Science and visiting professor of Law and Economics at the California Institute of Technology; Dean of USC Law School from 2000-2006
• George Hedges, 1978 - senior partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges LLP and attorney to numerous celebrity clients; led team of archaeologists in discovering the lost city of Ubar in Oman in 1991.
• Stephen G. Larson, 1989 - judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

Politics

• Bertrand W. Gearhart, 1910 - lawyer and former member of the United States House of Representatives
• Fletcher Bowron, 1911 - former mayor of Los Angeles
• J. Curtis Counts 1941 - Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.^[7]
• Buron Fitts, 1916 - former Lieutenant Governor of California
• Thomas Kuchel, 1935 - former United States Senator
• Craig Hosmer, 1940 - former United States Representative
• Fred Hall, 1941 - former Governor of Kansas
• James B. Utt, 1946 - former United States Representative
• Carlos Moorhead, 1949 - former United States Representative
• Robert Finch 1951 - attorney, former Lieutenant Governor of California, former United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare
• Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, 1956 - Los Angeles County supervisor, former member of the United States House of Representatives
• Michael L. Williams, 1979 - senior commissioner of the Railroad Commission of Texas
• John Heilman, 1982 - mayor of West Hollywood
• William B. Jones, (unknown) - former Ambassador to Haiti, former Ambassador-in-Residence and Professor of Political Science at Hampden-Sydney College.

Sports and media

• Carey McWilliams, 1927 - author, lawyer, journalist, and editor of The Nation for twenty years
• Joseph Wapner, 1948 - Judge of The People's Court, former Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge
• Terry Baker, 1968 - played quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams and the CFL's Edmonton Eskimos while earning a J.D. at USC
• Amy Trask, 1985 - CEO of the Oakland Raiders
• Rick Neuheisel, 1990 - College and professional Football Coach. Current head football coach at UCLA and former UCLA quarterback.

Notes and References

External links

• USC Law website
• USC Law School Library Catalog
• University of Southern California
• Southern California Law Review
• Interdisciplinary Law Journal
• Review of Law and Social Justice