On a trip through Regent University Law School's web-site and related clippings on their dubious accreditation by the American Bar Association.
In an excellent recommended diary today Beware Sleeper Cell in the U.S.A. MrMichaelMT does a fine job in pointing out the extent that Regent Law School has dominated the hiring choices made by the Bush Crime Family in filling legal positions.
As with anything Bush, to pass muster, any choice is wrong, illegitimate, misguided, and motivated by an extremist right-wing ideology. In the case of its choice as the legal 'farm-club' for its crime family, Regent is a perfect choice.
A bit of background on the Law School
The first general rule about a law school is: if it isn't accredited by the American Bar Association, put down the catalog, and slowly walk away and find another school that is. Graduating from a non-accredited law school is like working at Faux news and calling oneself a journalist: No one will believe you because they know you are a liar, and Faux news is an illegitimate source for news.
Monica Goodling graduated from Regent the three years after it actually received accreditation. Why, you may ask did not the school have its accreditation? The easy answer is that it didn't deserve it because, well, it isn't really a law school. But, there is more to it than that.
The Law School lied to the ABA about its tenure program. Without one, accreditation is not warranted and is not given. We could sit here and argue the pros and cons of tenure, but for purposes of this dairy, it suffices to say that it is a variable that must exist for the ABA. Very briefly, it has to do with assuring a certain academic freedom to its faculty. And, well, you all know how much right-wing religious zealots treasure 'academic freedom'...
This is how Regent lied about its program to trick the ABA. It didn't work....
How could the university sell this tenure policy to the ABA? Herbert W. Titus, the law school dean, had a solution: Don't change the policy, Titus told a professor on Christmas Eve 1988. Just reconstrue it, lawyer it a bit.
The result was a letter to the ABA that apparently misrepresented the school's tenure policy. Top officials at the university admitted in court this month that the letter was not true.
Now, the deception has returned to bite Regent University, as the school is now known. For six days earlier this month, the letter was a crucial piece of evidence in a trial that challenges the university's new tenure system.
Worse, the deception ticked off the ABA, which refused to grant Regent full accreditation this year, in part because of the misleading letter.
``It was an inaccurate representation of the university's policy in respect to tenure, and we've had to pay for it,'' Law Dean J. Nelson Happy said last week. ``They were absolutely rubbed the wrong way by it, and rightly so. We've paid the price. We took our 20 lashes.''
This is the story of Regent University's rocky, eight-year relationship with the American Bar Association - the story of why Regent apparently misled the ABA in 1989 and how, despite that, the law school stands closer than ever to accreditation.
This story is based, in part, on dozens of confidential documents, including ABA reports, that were made public this month during the trial of a lawsuit filed by three Regent professors, who are suing the university in Circuit Court.
From the start, university officials knew it would be rough.
Titus had warned them. In 1985, when the law school was just a glimmer in the eye of founder Pat Robertson, Titus wrote a fat feasibility study. It threw up every imaginable red flag.
``ABA accreditation is not something to be pursued without careful reflection,'' Titus wrote. ``Accreditation represents a submission to the ABA's authority and thorough scrutiny. . . . The standards promulgated by the ABA represent an intrusion into virtually every area of a law school's internal affairs.''
Titus also warned of entering ``an unholy alliance'' with the bar association.
Don't expect to be warmly welcomed by this close-knit legal fraternity, Titus cautioned. Look at what happened to Oral Roberts University. There, the law school got a court order to win provisional ABA accreditation. Even then, the ABA denied full accreditation, saying Oral Roberts' religious policies violated academic freedom and faculty tenure.
Expect the same treatment here, Titus warned. ``We should anticipate significant opposition from forces within the ABA,'' Titus wrote.
On almost every count, Titus proved to be prescient.
Problems began almost immediately.
source: a 1995 article from a Virginia periodical [emphasis added]
Now this is the part of the trickery that those who have been paying attention for the past six years ought to appreciate: GOD spoke to Titus and told him to lie. God talks to many people in and around the extended Bush Crime Family.
Titus had had a brainstorm on how to appease the ABA. At that time, the school had rolling three-year faculty contracts. Administrators later insisted these were not a guarantee of lifetime employment. The ABA demanded a more traditional form of tenure.
Titus told Amos his plan. ``The Lord showed him (Titus) to meet the ABA objection to the tenure matter, it was not necessary to redraft the language in the contract itself,'' Amos testified. ``All you had to do was reconstrue it. . . . It was a matter of construction, of lawyering.''
So Titus wrote a new letter to the ABA. It was signed by university President Bob G. Slosser. It declared that CBN had tenure, that a professor could not be fired unless he breached his contract or his program was discontinued.
``Under no circumstances other than the ones set forth above would a faculty member be refused a new three-year contract on an annual basis,'' said the letter dated Jan. 12, 1989.
Eventually, the ABA granted the school accreditation in 1996, the year of Monica Goodling's matriculation to Regents.
A visit to their web-site
In my opinion, after looking at dozens and dozens of law school web-sites, I would say that this school deserves it fourth-tier rating. I was taken aback that its faculty actually does have some members with publications, and not all of them are graduates of Regents.
Their course listing is sparse, as can be expected from a low-ranked school, and it appears that they do not offer a full traditional first-year program, but, its students can take electives after their first full semester.
They have two faculty bloggers, and about a dozen student blogs are listed on the school's web-site. A quick look at all, and a search for "Goodling" produced no hits. Apparently, the largest story about their University in its checkered history is of no immediate concern.
Here is the announcement of the ABA giving approval in 1996.