As if there weren’t enough culture-war lawsuits being filed, Jerry Falwell has decided to expand his right-wing college and add a law school.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell will open a law school this month in hopes of training a generation of attorneys who will fight for conservative causes.
“We want to infiltrate the culture with men and women of God who are skilled in the legal profession,” Falwell said in a telephone interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. “We’ll be as far to the right as Harvard is to the left.”
Graduates of the law school — part of Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, which is affiliated with his Baptist ministry — could tackle such issues as abortion rights and gay marriage, Falwell said. Classes begin Aug. 23 for the first-year class of 61 law students.
“I’d love to fight Roe v. Wade,” said incoming law student Heidi Thompson, 33, a Liberty graduate who has spent the past few years working as a high school counselor in Orlando, Fla.
To be sure, this is disturbing on its face. Falwell isn’t trying to train students to be effective lawyers, he wants to create an throng of ideological theocrats who will push his brand of fundamentalist Christianity in American courts. While real law schools feature a diverse faculty, which challenge students to understand the law from every angle, Falwell’s goal is three years of indoctrination — developing lawyers who embrace his worldview.
Indeed, Mathew Staver, who helped Falwell create a legal group called Liberty Counsel in 1989, largely admitted the goal earlier this year.
“We are going to teach lawyers to think in a biblical, Christian world view. They will indeed expand this area of litigation.” Those students will in turn one day become instructors at other law schools, and most important, they’ll become judges, he promises.
What’s worse, they won’t be alone.
Pat Robertson’s Regent University also, of course, has its own law school, which is committed to the same goals as Falwell’s school. There’s also Ave Maria Law School, an ultra-conservative Roman Catholic institution founded by Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan that has already won high praise from Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.
These guys are creating an army. Be afraid.