yoMAMA
11-22-2004, 01:11 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/national/22law.html?oref=login&hp
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November 22, 2004
Giving the Law a Religious Perspective
By ADAM LIPTAK
LYNCHBURG, Va., Nov. 17 - The class in civil procedure, at the new Liberty School of Law here, began with a prayer.
"The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul," said Prof. Jeffrey C. Tuomala, quoting Psalm 19. "The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple."
But decisions of the United States Supreme Court, Professor Tuomala went on, are not always trustworthy. "Something that is contrary to the law of nature," he said, "cannot be law."
The school, part of Liberty University, whose chancellor is the Rev. Jerry Falwell, is for now a makeshift affair in a vast industrial building that used to be a cellular phone factory. Its students compensate for the surroundings by dressing well - many of the men wore jackets and ties - and by showing attentive enthusiasm, even for a heavy dose of civil procedure at 8 a.m.
The school, which says its mission is to train "ministers of justice," is part of a movement around the nation that means to bring a religious perspective to the law and a moral component to legal practice.
"People are realizing that some of the biggest issues of the day are being decided in the courts - the 2000 presidential election, the question of what is marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, cloning,'' said Jeffrey A. Brauch, the dean of Regent Law School, which was founded in 1986 in Virginia Beach by Pat Robertson, the television evangelist. "And maybe there are eternal principles of justice that will tell us how to approach these questions."
The new law schools say they are a sort of counterweight to the views that dominate the legal academy.
"The prevailing orthodoxy at the elite law schools is an extreme rationalism that draws a strong distinction between faith and reason," said Bruce W. Green, Liberty's dean.
The claim that professors at the leading law schools tilt to the left is supported by statistics. According to a forthcoming study of 21 top law schools from 1991 to 2002 by John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University, approximately 80 percent of the professors at those schools who made campaign contributions primarily supported Democrats, while 15 percent primarily supported Republicans.
Peter H. Schuck, a law professor at Yale, where 92 percent of faculty political contributions went to Democrats, said Dean Green was right to question whether religious perspectives are welcomed at mainstream law schools.
"There is a sort of soft tolerance of competing views," Professor Schuck, who described himself as a political moderate, said, "but no real interest in exposing students to seriously developed contrary points of view that proceed from a strong faith-based perspective. Fundamentalism is derided."
The Liberty School of Law offers no courses in religion as such, and most of its classes are rigorous, practical and conventional. Like law students everywhere, students at Liberty spend much of their time reading and discussing judicial decisions. But where mainstream law professors tend to ask questions about judges' fidelity to precedent and the Constitution, Liberty professors often analyze decisions in terms of biblical principles.
"If our graduates wind up in the government," Dr. Falwell said, "they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible."
Many of the dozen students who chatted with a reporter over two days at the school, representing a fifth of the school's first and only class, said they were drawn to its emphasis on fundamental and enduring truths.
"We study the law that's written on the heart, the things that no one can deny," Brian Fraser said.
Sarah Getz pointed to the election returns as proof that this sentiment is widely shared.
"A lot of people decided to vote on moral, conservative issues, which is one of the main focuses of this university," Ms. Getz said. "This law school is definitely portraying what the public is shifting toward."
Sarah Smith was one of the few students who said she was preparing to litigate religious issues. "The Ten Commandments issue is on my heart," Ms. Smith said, referring to controversies about whether the commandments may be displayed in public settings. "That and the abortion issue."
Other students said they wanted to go into real estate law or commercial litigation. Most said it was too soon to tell.
The new religious law schools - Liberty, Regent and two Roman Catholic schools, Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis - differ in many ways. But they share an opposition to what they see as the moral relativism of the standard law school education and the moral peril of much law practice.
Patrick J. Schiltz, a law professor who helped found St. Thomas, said in a speech there that the school does not want to produce "nameless, faceless lawyers who populate the giant law firms in New York and Washington and Chicago, grinding out thousands upon thousands of billable hours, often toward no end other than getting rich and determining whether one huge insurance company will have to write out a check to another huge insurance company."
In Professor Tuomala's civil procedure class, the topic on Wednesday morning was a law school warhorse: the Supreme Court's 1938 decision in Erie v. Tompkins, a case that has baffled generations of law students. Judging by the halting Socratic dialogue, Professor Tuomala's natural-law critique of the case did not immediately clarify matters.
The Erie decision, which is viewed as uncontroversial in much of the legal academy, represented a disastrous wrong turn, Professor Tuomala said. In ruling that federal courts may not apply general principles in some cases but must follow state laws, he said, the Supreme Court denied the possibility of "a law that's fixed, that's uniform, that applies to everybody, everyplace, for all time."
He noted, though, that his perspective was "out on the limb in judicial orthodoxy."
Other professors wove moral and religious issues into their classes with a lighter touch.
"Your reputation is key," Prof. Jory H. Fisher told her class in lawyering skills. "It is just so easy to torpedo your reputation by doing something as frivolous and wrong as filing motion after motion to gain an unfair advantage."
Professor Fisher said there were alternatives to litigation. "Maybe you could just pick up the phone and talk about it," she said. Prof. Roger C. Bern, who teaches contracts, said that he asked his students to look beyond law as it is ordinarily understood. For example, he said, Christian lawyers should counsel clients not to walk away from oral contracts even where the law allows it.
"The civil government will give you a defense," Professor Bern said. "In God's judgment, I don't know that you're coming off well, making a promise and then breaking it."
Dr. Falwell said he hoped Liberty graduates would choose their cases carefully.
"We will not be committed, for instance, to being good divorce lawyers," he said. "We'll be reconciliation lawyers."
Liberty is open, its admission materials say, to "all persons whose conduct does not undermine its historic Christian character."
Dean Green said: "We think our approach is beneficial even if you don't embrace the Christian faith or any faith at all. We've had Jewish applicants. We might have had a Muslim applicant. We have one Jewish student."
The school is not yet accredited by the American Bar Association, which means its students are taking an enormous risk. If accreditation is not granted by the time they graduate in 2007, they will not be eligible to take the bar examination. Dean Green said the subject kept him awake at night.
Tuition is about $18,000 a year, though several students said they had received generous scholarships.
One student, Dustin Barr, said he had weighed the scholarship against the possibility of three largely wasted years.
"You want to come out of law school debt free," he said. "On the other hand, what's a $30,000 debt if you're making good money as a lawyer?"
"There was," Mr. Barr concluded, "an element of faith in my decision to come here."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 22, 2004
Giving the Law a Religious Perspective
By ADAM LIPTAK
LYNCHBURG, Va., Nov. 17 - The class in civil procedure, at the new Liberty School of Law here, began with a prayer.
"The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul," said Prof. Jeffrey C. Tuomala, quoting Psalm 19. "The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple."
But decisions of the United States Supreme Court, Professor Tuomala went on, are not always trustworthy. "Something that is contrary to the law of nature," he said, "cannot be law."
The school, part of Liberty University, whose chancellor is the Rev. Jerry Falwell, is for now a makeshift affair in a vast industrial building that used to be a cellular phone factory. Its students compensate for the surroundings by dressing well - many of the men wore jackets and ties - and by showing attentive enthusiasm, even for a heavy dose of civil procedure at 8 a.m.
The school, which says its mission is to train "ministers of justice," is part of a movement around the nation that means to bring a religious perspective to the law and a moral component to legal practice.
"People are realizing that some of the biggest issues of the day are being decided in the courts - the 2000 presidential election, the question of what is marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, cloning,'' said Jeffrey A. Brauch, the dean of Regent Law School, which was founded in 1986 in Virginia Beach by Pat Robertson, the television evangelist. "And maybe there are eternal principles of justice that will tell us how to approach these questions."
The new law schools say they are a sort of counterweight to the views that dominate the legal academy.
"The prevailing orthodoxy at the elite law schools is an extreme rationalism that draws a strong distinction between faith and reason," said Bruce W. Green, Liberty's dean.
The claim that professors at the leading law schools tilt to the left is supported by statistics. According to a forthcoming study of 21 top law schools from 1991 to 2002 by John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University, approximately 80 percent of the professors at those schools who made campaign contributions primarily supported Democrats, while 15 percent primarily supported Republicans.
Peter H. Schuck, a law professor at Yale, where 92 percent of faculty political contributions went to Democrats, said Dean Green was right to question whether religious perspectives are welcomed at mainstream law schools.
"There is a sort of soft tolerance of competing views," Professor Schuck, who described himself as a political moderate, said, "but no real interest in exposing students to seriously developed contrary points of view that proceed from a strong faith-based perspective. Fundamentalism is derided."
The Liberty School of Law offers no courses in religion as such, and most of its classes are rigorous, practical and conventional. Like law students everywhere, students at Liberty spend much of their time reading and discussing judicial decisions. But where mainstream law professors tend to ask questions about judges' fidelity to precedent and the Constitution, Liberty professors often analyze decisions in terms of biblical principles.
"If our graduates wind up in the government," Dr. Falwell said, "they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible."
Many of the dozen students who chatted with a reporter over two days at the school, representing a fifth of the school's first and only class, said they were drawn to its emphasis on fundamental and enduring truths.
"We study the law that's written on the heart, the things that no one can deny," Brian Fraser said.
Sarah Getz pointed to the election returns as proof that this sentiment is widely shared.
"A lot of people decided to vote on moral, conservative issues, which is one of the main focuses of this university," Ms. Getz said. "This law school is definitely portraying what the public is shifting toward."
Sarah Smith was one of the few students who said she was preparing to litigate religious issues. "The Ten Commandments issue is on my heart," Ms. Smith said, referring to controversies about whether the commandments may be displayed in public settings. "That and the abortion issue."
Other students said they wanted to go into real estate law or commercial litigation. Most said it was too soon to tell.
The new religious law schools - Liberty, Regent and two Roman Catholic schools, Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis - differ in many ways. But they share an opposition to what they see as the moral relativism of the standard law school education and the moral peril of much law practice.
Patrick J. Schiltz, a law professor who helped found St. Thomas, said in a speech there that the school does not want to produce "nameless, faceless lawyers who populate the giant law firms in New York and Washington and Chicago, grinding out thousands upon thousands of billable hours, often toward no end other than getting rich and determining whether one huge insurance company will have to write out a check to another huge insurance company."
In Professor Tuomala's civil procedure class, the topic on Wednesday morning was a law school warhorse: the Supreme Court's 1938 decision in Erie v. Tompkins, a case that has baffled generations of law students. Judging by the halting Socratic dialogue, Professor Tuomala's natural-law critique of the case did not immediately clarify matters.
The Erie decision, which is viewed as uncontroversial in much of the legal academy, represented a disastrous wrong turn, Professor Tuomala said. In ruling that federal courts may not apply general principles in some cases but must follow state laws, he said, the Supreme Court denied the possibility of "a law that's fixed, that's uniform, that applies to everybody, everyplace, for all time."
He noted, though, that his perspective was "out on the limb in judicial orthodoxy."
Other professors wove moral and religious issues into their classes with a lighter touch.
"Your reputation is key," Prof. Jory H. Fisher told her class in lawyering skills. "It is just so easy to torpedo your reputation by doing something as frivolous and wrong as filing motion after motion to gain an unfair advantage."
Professor Fisher said there were alternatives to litigation. "Maybe you could just pick up the phone and talk about it," she said. Prof. Roger C. Bern, who teaches contracts, said that he asked his students to look beyond law as it is ordinarily understood. For example, he said, Christian lawyers should counsel clients not to walk away from oral contracts even where the law allows it.
"The civil government will give you a defense," Professor Bern said. "In God's judgment, I don't know that you're coming off well, making a promise and then breaking it."
Dr. Falwell said he hoped Liberty graduates would choose their cases carefully.
"We will not be committed, for instance, to being good divorce lawyers," he said. "We'll be reconciliation lawyers."
Liberty is open, its admission materials say, to "all persons whose conduct does not undermine its historic Christian character."
Dean Green said: "We think our approach is beneficial even if you don't embrace the Christian faith or any faith at all. We've had Jewish applicants. We might have had a Muslim applicant. We have one Jewish student."
The school is not yet accredited by the American Bar Association, which means its students are taking an enormous risk. If accreditation is not granted by the time they graduate in 2007, they will not be eligible to take the bar examination. Dean Green said the subject kept him awake at night.
Tuition is about $18,000 a year, though several students said they had received generous scholarships.
One student, Dustin Barr, said he had weighed the scholarship against the possibility of three largely wasted years.
"You want to come out of law school debt free," he said. "On the other hand, what's a $30,000 debt if you're making good money as a lawyer?"
"There was," Mr. Barr concluded, "an element of faith in my decision to come here."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company