Сан-Клара құқық мектебі: тарихы мен білімі

Private law school in Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara Law offers the Juris Doctor (J. D.) law degree, as well as several double degree programs, including J. D./Master of Business Administration (J. D./M. B. A.) and J. D./Master of Science in Information Systems (MSIS) offered in conjunction with Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. In addition, the school offers Master of Laws (LL. M.) degrees in intellectual property law, in U. S. law for foreign lawyers, and in international and comparative law. Santa Clara Law also features specialized curricular programs in high tech and intellectual property law, international law, public interest, social justice law, and is one of few law schools to offer a certificate in privacy law.

Santa Clara University School of Law was founded in 1911. The school is part of Santa Clara University (founded 1851), the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California and the oldest Catholic university in the American West. It was approved by the American Bar Association in 1937. It joined the Association of American Law Schools in 1940. Prior to the requirement that all California law graduates must take the state bar exam, Santa Clara Law was one of the five schools whose graduates were exempt from the examination, along with Boalt Hall, Hastings, Stanford, and USC.

Based on a 2001–2007 six year average, 73% of Santa Clara University Law graduates passed the California State Bar.

For the 2021 entering class, the top five feeder schools into Santa Clara Law were UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego, San Jose State University, and Santa Clara University. The top five feeder states in order are California, Texas, Nevada, Washington, and Arizona. For the 2021 entering class, 2,336 people applied to the School of Law and 205 full time and 21 part time students matriculated. For the 2021 entering class, the LSAT scores for entering full time students were 160 for the 75th percentile and 155 for the 25th percentile. The undergraduate GPA for full time entering students was 3.62 for the 75th percentile and 3.21 for the 25th percentile.

Over the last century, the Santa Clara University campus, located along El Camino Real in Santa Clara, has expanded to more than Amid its many Mission style academic and residential buildings are the historic mission gardens, rose garden, and palm trees. Until 1939, the law school inhabited present day St. Joseph's Hall at the center of campus. Under the tenure of Dean Edwin Owens, Bergin Hall was constructed and became home to the school in 1939. The new building was built using monies collected through Santa Clara football's successful appearances in the Sugar Bowl and named after Thomas Bergin, Santa Clara's first graduate, a California legal pioneer, and an early donor to the School of Law. The Edwin Heafey Law Library was constructed in 1963, and expanded in 1973 to include more space for library materials. Heafey was renovated and expanded again in 1988. The collection contains over 400,000 volumes in print and digital formats. Additionally, the library manages an institutional repository which currently contains over 4,000 digital items including a collection of papers related to the Congressional hearings regarding the Watergate Scandal donated by Congressman Don Edwards. Other digital collections include documents relating to litigation over the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act (also known as Obamacare) and the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. Also in 1973, Bannan Hall was built, including space for the Law School on the ground floor. In 2008 Dean Donald Polden announced the law school would have exclusive use of Bannan Hall, and the building was renovated and used exclusively by the law school shortly thereafter. In 2018, the Law school moved into Charney Hall, a new $60 million building built specifically to house the Law school.