In Re Hong Yen Chang

Filed 3/16/15

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA

) ) In re HONG YEN CHANG on Admission. ) S223736 ) ) ____________________________________)

THE COURT.* We grant Hong Yen Chang posthumous admission as an attorney and counselor at law in all courts of the state of California. Hong Yen Chang, a native of China, came to this country in 1872 as part of an educational program to teach Chinese youth about the West. (Farkas, Bury My Bones in America (1998) p. 87 (Farkas).) Chang graduated from the Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1879 and earned his undergraduate degree at Yale. (Id. at pp. 87, 89, 93.) He went on to graduate from Columbia Law School in 1886. (Id. at p. 90.) He applied for admission to the New York Bar, but despite a “high marking” and unanimous recommendation from the bar examiners, he was turned down by the state supreme court in 1887 because he was not a citizen. (In and About the City: Naturalizing a Chinaman. Hong Yen Chang’s Struggles to be Admitted to the Bar, N.Y. Times (Nov. 19, 1887) p. 8.) That same year, a New York judge issued Chang a certificate of naturalization.

* Cantil-Sakauye, C. J., Werdegar, J., Chin, J., Corrigan, J., Liu, J., Cuéllar, J., and Kruger, J.

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(Ibid.) After the New York Legislature passed a law allowing him to reapply for bar admission, Chang was admitted in 1888, becoming “the only regularly admitted Chinese lawyer in this country.” (A Chinese Lawyer: Hong Yen Chang and a Colored Student Admitted to the Bar, N.Y. Times (May 18, 1888) p. 1.) Chang then relocated to California, “where he planned to serve the large Chinese community of San Francisco.” (Farkas, supra, at p. 90.) When he moved for admission to the California bar, this court observed that his motion was “made in due form” and “his moral character duly vouched for.” (In re Hong Yen Chang (1890) 84 Cal. 163, 164.) At the time, however, a California statute provided that only United States citizens or persons “who have bona fide declared their intention to become such in the manner provided by law” could gain admission upon presentation of a license to practice law from another state. (Id. at p. 165, citing Code Civ. Proc., former § 279, enacted 1872 and repealed by Stats. 1931, ch. 861, § 2, p. 1762.) This court held that the statute “requires that they shall be persons eligible to become [citizens], as well as to have declared their intention.” (In re Hong Yen Chang, at p. 165.) Observing that “courts are expressly forbidden to issue certificates of naturalization to any native of China” under the federal Chinese Exclusion Act (Act of May 6, 1882, 47th Cong., ch. 126, § 14, 22 Stat. 58, 61), we determined that the certificate of naturalization Chang had obtained in New York “was issued without authority of law, and is void, it being conceded that the holder of it is a person of Mongolian nativity.” (In re Hong Yen Chang, at pp. 164–165.) The court concluded: “Holding, as we do, that the applicant is not a citizen of the United States, and is not eligible under the law to become such, the motion must be denied.” (Id. at p. 165.) Understanding the significance of our two-page decision denying Chang admission to the bar requires a candid reckoning with a sordid chapter of our state and national history. (See McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle