Hastings Law Journal Volume 45 | Issue 3 Article 7 1-1994 Codification and the California Mentality Lewis Grossman Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Lewis Grossman, Codification and the California Mentality, 45 Hastings L.J. 617 (1994). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol45/iss3/7 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Essay Codification and the California Mentality by LEwIS GROSSMAN* Introduction: The Pomeroy Paradox On August 8, 1878, John Norton Pomeroy, the principal instruc- tor at the newly established Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, delivered the school's inaugural address. It was the culminating mo- ment of an exhilarating decade for California's legal profession. Six years earlier, in 1872, California had moved to the forefront of American legal reform by becoming one of the first states in the nation to codify its complete body of laws. The legislature had en- acted the California Code, which included new Civil, Criminal, and Political Codes, as well as a revised Code of Civil Procedure. Com- mittees of prominent attorneys had drafted the Code, basing it largely on the work of the illustrious New York jurist, David Dudley Field.' The centerpiece of the California Code was the Civil Code, which consolidated all of the state's statutory and common-law rules gov- erning private relations (corporations, property, torts, contracts, and domestic matters) into one meticulously arranged volume.2 Only * Associate, Covington & Burling, Washington, D.C.