A Passion for Teaching: Professor Emeritus James Hogan

Just about everyone who knew the late Professor James Hogan has a story about him, and no one knew him better than his wife of 30 years, Jan Hogan. 

A brilliant and charismatic teacher who inspired students and colleagues alike for more than 35 years at UC Davis School of Law, Hogan died in December 2013 following a long illness. He is remembered fondly as a founding member of the King Hall faculty whose intense passion for teaching helped to establish high standards of academic excellence at the School of Law, his larger-than-life personality, and the countless stories he told or played a part in.

"There are just so many, and most of them are actually true," Jan Hogan said.

Professor Hogan really did fly to New York and back to Davis on the same day just to take in the Belmont Stakes horse race, she confirms. It's also true that when he would offer to host "A Night of Irish Revelry and Song" as part of the King Hall Legal Foundation Spring Auction, on occasion local authorities had to be summoned to restrain the revelers.  True, also, that he rose early each St. Patrick's Day to set bars of Irish Spring soap all around King Hall, and that his lectures were often enlivened with hilarious anecdotes from his days as a prosecutor as well as spontaneous remarks that have since passed into the realm of legend.

Yet for all the amusing anecdotes surrounding Professor Hogan, the most impressive stories are those told by faculty colleagues about how dedicated he was to excellence in teaching. Professor Hogan joined UC Davis School of Law in 1967 and quickly established himself as a dynamic and effective teacher, valued colleague, and outstanding scholar.  A two-time winner of the Law School's Distinguished Teaching Award, he was fanatical about preparing each and every lecture.

"The secret of Professor Hogan's great success as a teacher was the extraordinary effort he made to prepare each class," Professor Floyd Feeney said. "With all the courtroom experience he had, many people would have simply said, ‘I don't need to prepare, I'm already good enough.' Good enough was not Jim Hogan."

"He got up at three in the morning, if he had an early class, so he could go over and over the material, even if he'd taught it for 10 years, until he had everything just right," said Jan Hogan. "Then he would go over to the School of Law, make coffee for everybody, and go over it all again and again."

Professor Hogan's passion for teaching was awakened when he took courses from the famous trial attorney Edward Bennett Williams as a student at Georgetown University Law Center. "He was so engaging that students used to bring their dates to his classes, and Jim was fascinated by the way he could captivate his student audiences," said Jan.

Hogan excelled at Georgetown, winning the award for Best Individual Oral Presentation as a member of the winning team in the 1955 National Moot Court Competition. When trial commitments forced Williams to withdraw from teaching, the dean asked Hogan if he would take over some of his classes. "He wound up teaching some of his classmates and roommates," Jan said. "He taught there for three years, and he absolutely loved it."

After his graduation in 1956, he became a Professor of Law at his alma mater, then resigned three years later to join Hilland, Mack & Hogan, yet continued to teach on a part-time basis at Georgetown and at George Washington University. In 1967, he joined the faculty at UC Davis School of Law, where he taught courses in Civil Procedure, Evidence, Products Liability, Criminal Law, Trial Practice, and Remedies for more than 35 years. He served as the Reporter of California's Civil Discovery Act of 1986, and was the co-author (with Professor Gregory Weber) of California Civil Discovery (Bancroft Whitney 1996).

Jan Hogan moved to Davis from Australia when her first husband, William Moller, was a PhD student. They returned a few years later when he was offered a teaching job at the university, and lived in house adjacent to James Hogan and his first wife, Sandra, near the university.  Years later, after William Moller died of cancer and James and Sandra Hogan divorced, James and Jan began spending time together and eventually decided to marry.

"Our backgrounds were very different, and our personalities were very different, but we meshed together very well," said Jan. "I loved his sense of humor, his passion, the way he was widely read and could talk knowledgeably about so many things.  We had almost 30 years together, 30 wonderful years."

Between them, James and Han Hogan had seven children and 10 grandchildren, of whom James was very proud. Professor Hogan retired in 1994, but continued to teach until 2008 at UC Davis and other law schools. "At one point, he was teaching at Southwestern in Los Angeles, and USF in San Francisco, and here in Davis, taking planes and trains every day to keep up his schedule. It was insane, but he was thrilled to do it."

In his later years, declining health forced him to give up teaching.  "It was very hard for him, because he couldn't be himself," said Jan. "He couldn't do the things that he loved to do."

Yet he never lost his passion for excellence in legal education, as Professor Edward Imwinkelried found when he visited Professor Hogan at the UC Davis Retirement Hospital.

"I walked in and I said, ‘Jim, great news, we just got the bar results and 85 percent of our students passed on their first try!' And I looked at Jim and he was underwhelmed," Imwinkelried recalled. "He proceeded to explain, ‘Ed, with the quality of students we have, if we do our job as teachers, that number should be 90 percent every year.  That was his goal: to make this the most renowned teaching faculty in California, and year after year, hit that 90 percent goal.  He didn't pour himself into teaching because awards or adulation or teaching evaluations. He just plain loved the students."

In accepting the 2014 Distinguished Teaching Award, Professor Imwinkelried decided to use the award money to commemorate Professor Hogan's outstanding contribution to UC Davis School of Law, dedicating a student study room to the memory of James Hogan.

"It will not only be a tangible reminder of our institutional commitment to fine teaching," said Imwinkelried, "but also a permanent tribute to the most beloved teacher in the history of this law school."