Serranus Clinton Hastings (November 22, 1814 – February 18, 1893[9]) was an American politician, rancher and lawyer in California.

He won an election to be Attorney General of California, and assumed office shortly after his term as Chief Justice ended.

[1] Robert Collins Hastings was a good friend and supporter of DeWitt Clinton, whom Serranus gets his middle name from.

He did not immediately enter the practice of law and instead became an editor of the Indiana Signal, where he supported Martin Van Buren in his presidential campaign.

He moved to Terre Haute, Indiana, in December 1836 and underwent a legal examination by Judge Porters of the Circuit Court.

[13] He found the man guilty and sentenced him to be tied to an oak tree, receive 33 lashes across his back, be transported across the Mississippi River to Illinois, and be banished from the territory forever.

[6] Close to a year after his term ended as a member of the House of Representatives, Governor Ansel Briggs appointed him as the third Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court.

[7] In 1860 the California Legislature formed a committee to investigate the Round Valley massacres of the Yuki people from 1856 to 1859.

The committee obtained statements and documents from a number of individuals, including Serranus Hastings, a large landowner in Round Valley.

In his statement Hastings attested that “until the investigations of this committee” he had been “entirely ignorant” of the “outrages” committed by Walter Jarboe and the other members of the Eel River Rangers.

[23] However, the same investigation resulted in several mentions of Hastings as being an organizer and financer of Jarboe's Rangers and requesting U.S. military and California government help to suppress the Yukis.

The San Francisco Chronicle published an op-ed in which a Berkeley law professor, John Briscoe, reported that a UCLA history professor, Benjamin Madley, had asserted that Hastings had “helped to facilitate genocide” against Native Americans in California by promoting and funding “Indian-hunting expeditions in the 1850s.”[25][26] The book contains two sentences about Hastings.

The second is: “[Walter] Jarboe engaged men to hunt Indians, promising them payment from the state, or if Sacramento failed to pay, from the operation’s extremely wealthy mastermind, Judge Hastings, who owned an Eden Valley ranch and may have wanted to eliminate the Yuki [Indians who lived in and around the Eden and Round Valleys] in order to protect his stock.” [27] Brendan Lindsay in Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846-1873, Univ.

of Nebraska Press (2012), offered a judgment regarding Serranus Hastings's purported involvement in the indiscriminate killing of Yuki Indians in the Eden and Round Valleys: "Hastings and many others used the democratic process and the structures of republican government to call for and execute a massive genocide of 'Indians' during the second half of the nineteenth century.

"[28] David Faigman, Chancellor of Hastings College, appointed a Legacy Review Committee to advise him and hired Lindsay to write a “white paper” to inform the dean and the members of the committee regarding Hastings’ involvement in the killing of Yuki Indians in the Eden and Round Valleys.

Faigman distributed Lindsay's executive summary in which he stated: "[S]ome have charged that he [Serranus Hastings] is responsible in part for fomenting violence and atrocity against California Indians, particularly in and around his holdings in Eden Valley.

According to the historical record - including depositions, letters, and statements by Hastings’ contemporaries - significant proof exists that this was the case.

[citation needed] However, with one dissenter, the members of the committee recommended that the name of UC Hastings College of the Law not be changed.

[31] Fifteen months later, on October 27, 2021 The New York Times published a story that featured a photograph of Faigman and reported that he had “led a campaign to keep the school’s name.”[32] At Faigman’s instigation, the members of the Hastings Board of Directors held a “special meeting” six days after the article was published, during which they reversed their earlier decision and passed a motion that accused Serranus Hastings of promoting and funding “genocide against members of the Yuki Tribe and other Native Californians,” and directed Faigman “to work with the California Legislature, the Governor’s Office, and other offices to enact legislation changing the name of the school.”[33] The board has since appointed a committee to advise the members of the board whether they should reconsider their passage of that motion.

"[41]: 11 The article also states that "the school's leadership's decision to change the name had more to do with money and political clout than weighing against his alleged shortcomings objective factors that compared a notable individual's contributions to society and the school," and that "the school's leadership and California's legislature and governor simply accepted as gospel what the New York Times said about him [...]"[41]: 10 Hastings continued to practice law after his term as Attorney General ended, and also became a member of the Henley, Hastings & Co. bank firm located in Sacramento, California.

[8] He and his wife had seven more children after this: Charles Foster Dio., Douglas, Uhler, Robert Paul, Flora Azalea, Ella, and Lillie.

He gradually acquired around one hundred lots of real estate in San Francisco, and bought large tracts of land in Solano, Napa, Lake, and Sacramento counties.

[8] In 1861, he put up many four-room buildings in the south side of San Francisco for the poor with the money he earned in real estate.

[8] In 1865, he traveled to Europe; four years later he accompanied William H. Seward to view the recently purchased territory of Alaska.