UCLA School of Law

During the mid-1940s, the impetus for the creation of the UCLA School of Law emerged from outside of the UCLA community. Assemblyman William Rosenthal of Boyle Heights (on the other side of Los Angeles from UCLA) conceived of and fought for the creation of the first public law school in Southern California as a convenient and affordable alternative to the expensive private law school at USC.Rosenthal's first attempt in 1945 failed, but his second attempt was able to gain momentum when the State Bar of California and the UCLA Alumni Association announced their support for the bill. On July 18, 1947, Governor Earl Warren authorized the appropriation of $1 million for the construction of a new law school at UCLA by signing Assembly Bill 1361 into state law. The search for the law school's first dean was difficult and delayed its opening by a year.UCLA's law school planning committee prioritized merit, while the then-conservative Regents of the University of California prioritized political beliefs. Another factor was a simultaneous deanship vacancy at Berkeley Law.  Near the end of 1948, the Committee finally identified a sufficiently conservative candidate willing to take the job: L. Dale Coffman, then the dean of Vanderbilt University Law School. The Regents believed Coffman would help bring balance to the UCLA campus, which they saw as overrun by Communists Coffman was able to recruit several distinguished faculty to UCLA, including Roscoe Pound, Brainerd Currie, Rollin M. Perkins, and Harold Verrall.^[7][9] To build a law library, he hired Thomas S. Dabagh, then the law librarian of the Los Angeles County Law Library.^[7][9] The UCLA School of Law officially opened in September 1949 in temporary quarters in former military barracks behind Royce Hall, and moved into a permanent home upon the completion of the original Law Building in 1951.^[7][9][8]