Honorees

Hon. William Arthur Sloane

1854-1930

No more honored and honorable person ever has represented San Diego upon the Bench than did William Arthur Sloane.  But notwithstanding the man’s unparalleled judicial experience he never was able to wash the luring smell of printer’s ink from his fingers.  He was a newspaper man for six years in Missouri, and then wrote for the San Diego papers after coming here.  In 1927, being over seventy years of age, and having served a long career as local justice of the peace and judge of the superior court, followed by terms upon the Benches of the State’s District Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court, he still wrote for the “Independent”, then a San Diego morning newspaper.  And therein lies a story.

Following urgings of several reasonably prominent local citizens, a “letter to the editor” appeared in the Independent suggesting that Balboa Park facilities well could be used as the site for a small college.  San Diego State College had not yet been built on the uninhabited “bad lands” above ‘dobe falls on Alvarado canyon! The letter was published; and also a blasting editorial by Judge Sloane, taking the whole idea apart, degree by degree, from A.A. to Ph.D., and magna cum laude! The passing years proved Judge Sloane to be right, but that’s not the story.

The letter writer was somewhat annoyed; and that Fall of 1927, in a corner of the original Park, Balboa University was started. Twenty five years later its name was changed to California Western. Somewhere in its memorabilia niches for instigating souls there well might appear the bust of San Diego’s most widely experienced jurist, Hon. William A. Sloane!

In addition to biographies in various volumes of San Diego history, an excellent report of the Sloane story recently has appeared in  “Supreme Court Justices of California” by J. Edward Johnson.  Born in Rockford, Illinois, 1854, William A. Sloane received some schooling there before his family took him with them to Iowa for four years, and then to Missouri. He was graduated from Grinnell College, Iowa, in 1877.  He studied law in his brother’s office, and was admitted to the Bar in 1878.  The lawyer-brothers then published the “Eagle-Times” newspaper along with their legal work.

In 1882 Sloane was married, and moved to Carthage, Mo., to edit the “Daily Banner” for four years- In the meantime, John, the brother, had moved to San Diego where he practiced law and served as city councilman and justice of the peace, William followed him here, succeeded him as J.P., and was appointed to the superior court in 1911, to the District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles in 1919, and to the state Supreme Court in 1920.   In 1919, Judge Sloane joined other members of the Bench to urge ratification of President Wilson’s League of Nations peace treaty (LA Times, 10/1/19 & 10/15/19).

Sloane practiced here, 1923-28, and was drafted by the Governor to become Presiding Justice of the newly created Fourth District Court of Appeal in 1929. He died in office the following year. His ashes were scattered over the ranch he loved on the Sweetwater River. His memory, too, flows on — and sweet — in the thoughts of those who knew and admired him. (San Diego’s “Legal Lore & the Bar” by Leland G. Stanford, 1968, p. 219).

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