at Hastings exploded from 300 in 1941 to 496 in 1946 and to 917 in 1949. It was the rapid postwar expansion of Hastings which enabled Boalt Hall to vault into the top tier of American law schools by the 1990s, by relieving political pressure on the law faculty at Berkeley to compromise on their strict standards for student admissions and faculty hiring.
It was Snodgrass who finally found Hastings a permanent home. 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. 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.
=== The 65 Club ===
Snodgrass exploited the law school's independence from the University of California and its mandatory retirement policies …
