Southwestern Law School - History

History

Southwestern Law School was founded on November 25, 1911 as the Southwestern College of Law. John J. Schumacher, its founder, intended the nonprofit institution to be a law school that reached out to women and minorities. The school is one of the oldest law schools in the state of California and the second oldest law school in Los Angeles.

Southwestern received a university charter in 1913 after it expanded to include a number of other disciplines including a business school. Southwestern's first "home" was in the Union Oil Building in downtown Los Angeles, followed by a small campus on South Hill Street, where it existed for the ensuing decades.

The Great Depression and Second World War took a severe toll on the school's enrollment, and by the end of the 1930s the law school was the only school that remained. However, as veterans returned home the school experienced a surge of interest, and in 1974, the campus was moved to the school's current location on Westmoreland Avenue in the Wilshire Center area of Los Angeles.

It joined the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) in 1974. It is a member of the North American Consortium on Legal Education.

In 1994, Southwestern acquired the adjacent Bullocks Wilshire building, an historic landmark which was subsequently renovated to house the school's law library, classrooms, faculty offices, and a high-tech state of the art court room and advocacy center.

Read more about this topic:  Southwestern Law School

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.
    Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)

    In all history no class has been enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would vote for their party, we should be enfranchised.
    Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947)

    The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
    Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)