Our articles represent important new research. For example, the exploration by attorney Bob Wolfe of the litigation surrounding the 1915 release of Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith’s incendiary portrayal of post-Civil War America. The film’s racist depiction of African Americans has been appropriately condemned. Less well known is the long struggle Wolfe recounts, by lawyers representing the newly formed NAACP around California as well as by some local government leaders, to halt showings of the film. Wolfe also meticulously documents the film’s role in stoking renewed interest in the Ku Klux Klan; membership in the group swelled during the 1920s, including thousands of California residents as well as many elected officials and law enforcement officers.
In our current issue, attorney Colleen Regan and I detail how California’s bar examination questions, to our surprise, tracked some of the twentieth century’s most pressing political and policy issues. In addition to asking prospective lawyers to untangle hypothetical negligence, contract and inheritance disputes, the California bar exam, from 1933-2021 often presented questions involving racial and gender equality, free speech, association, and religious expression — issues that generated fierce national debate and often violence. In addition to demonstrating the basic competencies necessary to practice law, we conclude that bar examiners in past decades included these social justice questions because they believed that lawyers had a responsibility to think broadly about equity and civil rights — issues newly resonant, particularly in the post–World War II years.
