Sunday, January 16, 2005

The Richmond paper takes on the law schools at Liberty and Regent

Sunday's Richmond paper has this article ("New faith in the law," 1/16/05) about the new law school at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, this article ("Faith is not held in contempt," 1/16/05) about the law school in Virginia Beach at Dr. Pat Robertson's Regent University, and this article ("A partnership of education - and action," 1/16/05) about the collaboration between Regent students and alumni and Jay Sekulow's ACLJ.

The articles say, among other things, that Liberty plans to have 450 students within 5 years, and that Regent's study body is around 500. The new dean at Liberty is a graduate of Regent. Del. McDonnell, one of the two Republican candidates for Attorney General, is an early graduate of Regent. 15 or 20 Regent students per year work as interns for the ACLJ.

One paragraph says: "If the law schools at Regent and Falwell's Liberty University cause any uneasiness, it appears to be the fear they will train their students to specifically attack abortion rights and other issues that some Christians see as immoral."

The only lawyer I've ever met who actually litigated an abortion rights case was the former Wailing Cat, Ed McNelis, who litigated the partial-birth abortion statute before Judge Williams. I'm thinking that not more than 1 out of every 1,000 of the 1,000,000 lawyers in America will ever have anything to do with litigating abortion rights. The idea that any law school will "train their students to specifically attack abortion rights" is sort of like saying that Virginia Tech is going to specialize in producing astronauts, or Georgia Tech is gearing its student body towards becoming infielders in the National League.

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