The Gun Club (secret society)

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The Gun Club is a secret society of students at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). Chief Justice Earl Warren is the Gun Club's most famous and only known member.[1]

Though little is known about the secret group, it has been reported that the Gun Club continues to meet and is composed of "[m]en" who "lived for the drink who died by the gun."[2] (This reference to "[m]en" is controversial, as more than more than 50% of recent Boalt Hall classes have been composed of women[3]). Most notably, it is believed that a book (a "tome", in Gun Club parlance), "well hid" by Members within the law school, has had its pages mutilated and its contents replaced with a flask presumably containing liquor.

It is believed that the Gun Club has no codified body of rules, but rather only a common law derived from individual cases.

[edit] History

It is unknown how the Gun Club began. In his biography of Chief Justice Earl Warren, Ed Cray describes how Warren was invited to become a member of the secretive Gun Club. Membership in the society, based on companionship rather than social standing, nurtured Warren's idealism. As a member, he strove to earn "a love between men who would put virtue and honor and loyalty above all else," as a later member put it.

Ed Cray, Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren 27 (1997).[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ EARL WARREN, THE 14th CHIEF JUSTICE - TIME
  2. ^ Boalt Hall Transcript Fall 2005
  3. ^ Students
  4. ^ Amazon.com: Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren: Books: Ed Cray

[edit] External links