Did the California bar enact "diploma privilege after the 1906 California earthquake and during WWII"?

This claim, versions of which I’ve seen elsewhere, appears in a letter signed by hundreds of law students urging the California Supreme Court to enact an “emergency diploma privilege” as an alternative to the traditional bar exam. (Some of my thoughts on that are here and here, and some accommodations state bars should assuredly now take are here.)

Here’s the claim:

Diploma privilege is feasible. After all, California enacted diploma privilege after the 1906 California earthquake and during WWII.[footnote]

The claims are not entirely accurate and much narrower than presented (both here and elsewhere).

The footnote of the letter cites this article, which actually confirms my instinct about the California bar in 1906—the California State Board of Bar Examiners was formed in 1919, which then created “the first written exams” in 1920. (Independently, he article does not claim that “diploma privilege” was “enacted” after the 1906 earthquake.)

Prior to 1906, then, admission to the bar was on motion. There was no written bar exam (as we know it) in the first place.

And the 1906 episode is a specific incident at the University of California - Hastings that prompted the 1906 story. Here’s a story from the Hastings Law Journal in 1953:

The fire and earthquake of 1906 worked its havoc on Hastings. The City Hall was completely destroyed. Although former students allege that they started out for the College on April 18, no trace of Hastings could be found. The College year ended abruptly. So great was the catastrophe that it was deemed permissible to waive final examinations, which, through coincidence, ha[d] been scheduled for that day. The class of 1906 had an unique distinction. Whereas earlier classes had been admitted to the bar on the motion of the faculty (college examinations being passed to the satisfaction of the faculty) the class of 1906 was admitted “because of the motion of the earth!”

It’s worth emphasizing, then, that diploma privilege was actually the norm in 1906, not the exception. The exception arose in whether graduating law students needed to complete their final examinations. And it only extended, apparently, to the University of California - Hastings, given that the law school was destroyed the day of the exam. (Apparently, the California bar accepted the motion of the faculty even in the absence of a final law school examination.) And there was no traditional written “bar exam” at the time.

Additionally, the World War II exception is somewhat narrower than identified, but relevant as I detail below. Here’s how it was summarized in that footnote citation, Admissions standards evolve across decades, by Kathleen Beitiks in the California Bar Journal:

For many years the California examination consisted of a written test exclusively. And under some circumstances during World War II, bar examiners waived the exam requirement for returning soldiers whose legal careers were interrupted.

This exception was actually a statutory exemption enacted by the California legislature. Here’s Chapter 65 from the First Extraordinary Session of the 56th California Legislature, enacted in 1946:

The provisions of subdivisions (d) and (h) of Section 6060 do not apply to any person who, after September 16, 1940, and prior to the termination of hostilities between the United States and the nations with which the United States is now at war as determined by Act of Congress or Proclamation of the President, has graduated from a law school accredited by the examining board and who after such graduation served in the armed forces of the United States before taking an examination for admission to the bar, nor to any person, who, after September 16, 1940 satisfactorily completed at least two years of study at a law school then accredited by the examining board and whose legal education was thereafter interrupted by his service in the armed forces of the United States, and who subsequently graduates from a law school accredited by the examining board. The provisions of this section shall not apply to any person who enters the armed forces of the United States after the effective date of this section, nor to any person who at the time of entering the armed forces was not a bona fide resident of this State.

This section shall remain in effect until the ninety-first day after final adjournment of the Fifty-eighth Regular Session of the Legislature. While this section is in effect it shall supersede any existing provisions of law which are in conflict with this section; but such provisions are not repealed by this section and after this section is no longer effective shall have the same force as though this section had not been enacted.

(Then, subsection (d) required one to be a bona fide resident of the state for three months before the bar exam, and subsection (h) required someone to “have passed a final bar examination given by the examining committee.”)

It’s not that diploma privilege was “enacted” “during World War II.” It’s that veteran residents of California who graduated from a California-accredited law school but had their education “interrupted” by military service had the bar requirement waived after the war ended.

That’s not to say that those who signed this letter don’t have a point in drawing an analogy here. There was an emergency interruption of law students’ ordinary careers as they went to serve in the military. Upon their return, the legislature waived the requirement that they take the bar exam. That seems particularly sensible, given that their study of law was interrupted—much easier to take the bar right after graduating rather than after years of military service in between. But, ease and convenience of the test-taker—more so than the pre-existing concerns of “protecting the public”—appear (!) to have motivated the legislature in this case.

So, too, should state bar licensing authorities (or state legislatures) consider what kind of interruption, and what kind of previous educational experience, might qualify for admission to the bar—a matter of robust debate in the weeks ahead in states around the country.