Notable alumni include Kamala Harris, the 49th vice president of the United States; George R. Roberts, a founding member of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts; Alexander Francis Morrison, the founding member of the international law firm Morrison & Foerster; William H. Orrick, the founding member of the international law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; and Todd Machtmes, the general counsel of Salesforce.

He arranged for the enactment of a legislative act on March 26, 1878, to create the Hastings College of the Law as a separate legal entity affiliated with the University of California.

[3]: 44, 71–72 [4] This was apparently intended for compatibility with Section 8 of the university's Organic Act, which authorized the board of regents to affiliate with independent self-sustaining professional colleges.

"[3]: 81–82 According to the Hastings College of the Law's official centennial history, its founder, "whether from arrogance, oversight, ignorance, or a combination of all three, was the author of his own troubles.

[3]: 67–68  This latter belief was shared by the first professor hired, John Norton Pomeroy, who personally taught the vast majority of courses during the law school's early years.

[3]: 77–78  By that point in time, he had come to see the UC Board of Regents as a superior vehicle for infusing liberal arts and legal ethics into his law school, and in March 1883 arranged for another legislative act that purported to transfer the Hastings College of the Law directly to the University of California and vested responsibility for its governance in the regents.

[3]: 78–80 [6] This was in facial conflict with the "affiliate" language in Section 8 of the Organic Act, so in March 1885, another act was passed to create a pro forma board of trustees for the sole purpose of holding title to the law school's assets at arm's length from the regents (but under which the regents would continue to have the right to manage such assets).

[3]: 80–85  At the request of Serranus Clinton Hastings, Attorney General Edward C. Marshall challenged Kewen's appointment by initiating a proceeding for a writ of quo warranto in San Francisco County Superior Court.

[9] While Hastings remained independent, the Affiliated Colleges began to increasingly coordinate with each other and the rest of the UC bureaucracy in Berkeley under the supervision of the president and the regents, and evolved into the health sciences campus known today as the University of California, San Francisco.

[9] In 1899, the Hastings board of directors declined an invitation from the regents to join the Affiliated Colleges at their new campus at Parnassus Heights.

[10]: 45  During the early 20th century, Berkeley initiated a rapid transition to hiring full-time lecturers and professors to teach the majority of its law courses, but Hastings did not.

Boalt Hall's newly-hired dean, William Lloyd Prosser, got wind of this in 1948 while visiting UCLA to help plan the new law school and decided that Berkeley could get away with the same thing.

[10]: 231 [12] Snodgrass was a "feisty, outspoken advocate" who fought fiercely as dean to elevate the law school's profile both within California and at the national level.

[10]: 241  With its flexible part-time program, its heavy reliance on part-time instructors who made up the majority of its faculty, its habit of holding classes in any space it could scrounge up (including courtrooms and the city's public library), and its lenient admission requirement of only two years of college-level work (increased to three in 1950), Hastings could expand very quickly in a way that elitist, bureaucratic Boalt Hall could not.

He obtained an appropriation of $1.45 million from the state legislature and additional funding in the amount of $300,000 from the UC Board of Regents towards the construction of the law school's first permanent building, which opened on March 26, 1953.

[12] The building was later renamed Snodgrass Hall in honor of the man who had brought it into existence, and was the center of academic life at Hastings for over six decades before its demolition in October 2020.

Adjunct professor John Briscoe outlined a "Moral Case for Renaming Hastings College of the Law" in a 2017 opinion essay, explaining the school's founder, Serranus Clinton Hastings, "was promoter and financier of Indian-hunting expeditions in the 1850s" and his acquisition of land titles "was facilitated by the massacre of the rightful claimants.

[22] In 2020, after studying the matter for three years, a commission established by the school confirmed that its founder had managed a forced labor camp, organized murderous "Indian hunts", and otherwise participated actively in the genocide that killed most of the Native American population of Mendocino County, California.

However, the commission – which was led by chancellor David L. Faigman – recommended against a proposal to rename the school "as it could lead to public confusion" and "result in a decline in applications and perhaps a loss of philanthropic and alumni support.

"[24] In late October 2021 The New York Times published an article about S.C. Hastings's involvement in genocide against the Yuki and advocating for a name change.

[25] The article galvanized alumni, including former San Francisco mayor and Democratic Party power broker Willie Brown, to support a name change.

[28][29] On October 4, 2022, descendants of Serranus Clinton Hastings filed suit against the UC Law SF directors and the state to block the name change.

[33] Interviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle, David Carrillo (a member of the law faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, and not involved in the suit) said that there is a distinction between a signed agreement between Serranus Clinton Hastings and the state (which could be a binding contract that the legislature cannot repudiate by enactment) and a legislative act (which cannot prevent the legislature from later amending or repealing it).

[34][35] UC Law SF campus spreads among four main buildings located near San Francisco's Civic Center: 200 McAllister Street houses academic space and administrative offices,[36] 333 Golden Gate Avenue contains mainly classrooms and faculty offices, 198 McAllister is a 14-story residence complex with 657 units of housing, and 100 McAllister, known casually as "The Tower", contains university office and further student housing,[37] as well as the Art Deco "Sky Room" on the 24th floor.

The campus is within walking distance of the Muni Metro and Bay Area Rapid Transit Civic Center/UN Plaza station.

The UC Law SF's board of directors exists independently of, and is not controlled by, the Regents of the University of California.

[46]For 2022-23 UC Law SF had the No.2 moot court program in the country, and placed first the prior two years, according to The National Jurist.

[54] According to UC Law SF official 2019 ABA-required disclosures, 70.6% of the Class of 2019 obtained full-time, long-term, JD-required employment (i.e. as attorneys) nine months after graduation, excluding solo-practitioners.