"a Candid Reckoning With a Sordid Chapter" of History

• Publication year: 2015
• Author: By Jeffrey L. Bleich and Aimee Feinberg*

"A Candid Reckoning With a Sordid Chapter" of History

By Jeffrey L. Bleich and Aimee Feinberg*

Rarely in legal history does a court acknowledge and make amends for profound failures of the past. But in March the California Supreme Court did just that when it posthumously admitted to the California bar Hong Yen Chang, the first Chinese lawyer in America who, in 1890, was denied membership in the California bar on account of his race. The Court's powerful opinion affirming Mr. Chang's "rightful place among the ranks of persons deemed qualified to serve"¹ as California lawyers corrected a historic injustice. Moreover, in an increasingly globalized legal community, it affirmed the essential wisdom of the U.S. Constitution's requirement to extend bar membership to non-citizens. In doing so, the California Supreme Court unequivocally reaffirmed the principle that California courts should be a welcome forum to people from all over the world.

In re Hong Yen Chang (1890)

In 1872, Mr. Chang came from China to the United States at age 13 as part of a Chinese educational program.² Mr. Chang attended elite American schools, and upon earning his law degree from Columbia Law School, became the first Chinese lawyer educated in the United States.³ When he first applied to the New York bar, that state's Supreme Court denied his application on the ground that he was not a citizen.⁴ But a state court judge later issued him a naturalization certificate, and the New York State Legislature enacted a law permitting him to reapply, steps that cleared the way for him to earn admission to the New York bar and become the only regularly admitted Chinese lawyer in this country.⁵

Despite his academic accomplishments and membership in the New York bar, the California Supreme Court refused Mr. Chang's application to practice law in this state. In a published decision, In re Hong Yen Chang, the California Supreme Court held that Mr. Chang, a non-citizen, was ineligible for the California bar.⁶ The Court acknowledged that Mr. Chang, who was admitted to practice in New York and whose moral character was "duly vouched for," was otherwise qualified for admission.⁷ But at the time, a California statute made non-citizens ineligible for the bar, and the federal Chinese

Exclusion Act expressly forbade Chinese nationals from naturalizing.⁸ Indeed, the Court noted that, because of the Chinese Exclusion Act's prohibitions, Mr. Chang's naturalization certificate, granted by a New York judge just two years earlier, was "issued without authority of law" and therefore "void."⁹ Because Mr. Chang, "a person of Mongolian nativity," could not become a citizen, the Court concluded, he could not practice law in this state.¹⁰

At the time the Court denied Mr. Chang's application for admission, discrimination against Chinese immigrants was deeply ingrained in California law.¹¹ California statutes, for example, made it illegal to employ Chinese workers and prohibited state and local governments from issuing business licenses to persons of Chinese descent.¹² An entire article of the California Constitution was dedicated to enshrining discrimination against Chinese immigrants.¹³ In an article entitled "Chinese," the charter declared that the "presence of foreigners ineligible to become citizens of the United States is . . . dangerous to the well-being of the State" and imposed a set of onerous legal disabilities, including prohibiting Chinese workers from working for private corporations or on public works projects and directing the Legislature to authorize localities to remove Chinese immigrants from their communities.¹⁴

When Mr. Chang died in 1926, these...