Oral Histories

Interview of James A. C. Grant

UCLA professor of political science and dean of the UCLA School of Law and Social Sciences. Chair of the UCLA Academic Senate.
Subtitle:
Comparative Constitutional Law at UCLA
Series:
Interviews not in a series, part one
Topic:
UCLA and University of California History
UCLA Faculty
Biographical Note:
UCLA professor of political science and dean of the UCLA School of Law and Social Sciences. Chair of the UCLA Academic Senate.
Interviewer:
Novak, Steven J.
Interviewee:
Grant, James A. C.
Supporting Documents:
Records relating to the interview are located in the office of the UCLA Library's Center for Oral History Research.
Language:
English
Copyright:
Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library.
Abstract:
Move to Los Angeles in 1907; enrolling in the University of California, Southern Branch; faculty and courses in political science and history; transferring to Stanford University to complete undergraduate education; Victor J. West; dissertation on the California legislature; teaching position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes; developing a relativist, interventionist philosophy of the law; evolution of liability doctrine; judicial versus legislative authority in questions of public policy; social activism and the law; move to UCLA in 1930; the Department of Political Science; Charles Grove Haines; the development of the Academic Senate; striving to become recognized as a first-class institution; the importance of faculty research and publications; Lawrence Clark Powell; placement of students; the UCLA student body in the 1930s; philosophy of teaching; evolution of research into comparative constitutions; research on Canadian and Colombian constitutional law; Ibero-American Congress in Constitutional Law; opinions on American intervention in Latin America; on Reaganomics; work for the air-conditioning industry; Robert Gordon Sproul; Clarence A. Dykstra; development of professional schools at UCLA; reorganizing the College of Letters and Sciences into divisions; Grant's appointment as dean, Division of Social Sciences; allocating resources; World War II; the War Labor Board; President Harry S Truman's loyalty boards; the loyalty oath controversy; opposition to the loyalty oath; debates within the Academic Senate; Academic Senate committee formed to mediate the loyalty oath dispute; student activism in the 1960s; Grant's work as adviser to President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam on constitutional and legal issues; Diem's opposition to an independent judiciary; the role of Michigan State University in advising the South Vietnamese government; ignorance of conditions in South Vietnam in the United States government; John Wilson O'Daniel, chief, United States military advisory group, 1954-55; Grant's efforts to start a joint Mexican-United States law program at UCLA in the early 1940s; decision to start a law school at UCLA; formation of planning committee in 1947; insisting that the law school be built on campus; search committee for first dean; the regents hire L. Dale Coffman against the advice of the search committee; Rollin M. Perkins; Harold E. Verrall; Roscoe Pound; Brainerd Currie; Coffman's anti-Semitism; James H. Chadbourn; faculty revolt against Coffman; Raymond B. Allen; Charles E. Young; involvement with the American Lung Association of Los Angeles County; appointment to the hearing board for the South Coast Air Quality Management District; conflict with Union Oil.