Herma Hill Kay
American legal scholar

Herma Hill Kay (August 18, 1934 – June 10, 2017) was the Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). She previously served as dean of Boalt from 1992 to 2000. She specialized in family law and conflict of laws.
Biography
Kay was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1934 to a third-grade teacher mother, Herma Lee Crawford, and an Army chaplain father, Charles Esdorn Hill. She studied English at Southern Methodist University and graduated magna cum laude in 1956. At SMU, she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She then attended law school at the University of Chicago, graduating third in her class in 1959. After law school, she clerked for one year for Justice Roger Traynor of the California Supreme Court. She joined the faculty at Boalt Hall in 1960 and became dean of that faculty in 1992. Kay died on June 10, 2017, at the age of 82.
The public source identifies “Herma Hill Kay” as american legal scholar. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Herma, Hill and American.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Herma Hill Kay”, the useful work is to connect “american legal scholar” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19868149. VIAF identifies the subject as 15904574. The Library of Congress control number is n81042162. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2017, 1992 and 2000.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Herma Hill Kay”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Herma Hill Kay primary sources, Herma Hill Kay archive and Herma research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Herma Hill Kay”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Herma Hill Kay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.