Wanted: different kind of lawyer - new Catholic law schools

National Catholic Reporter, August 13, 1999 by Pamela Schaeffer

New Catholic law schools emphasize religion, ethics, values

It may be common wisdom that the last thing the United States needs is more lawyers. Yet the number of Catholic law schools is on the rise.

Two Catholic universities, Seattle University and Barry University in Miami, have bought existing law schools and set out to change the culture at those schools from secular to religious.

Two other law schools are start-ups: one, opening in Minneapolis in 2001, is affiliated with St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Minn.; the other, to be known as Ave Maria School of Law, will be a freestanding school in Ann Arbor, Mich. It will open in August of 2000.

Deans and administrators of the four schools give varying reasons for acquiring or starting the new schools, but all agree on this: What's needed is not more lawyers, they say, but a different kind of lawyer -- lawyers who are not only proficient in their profession, but imbued with ethics and values and prepared to seek the common good.

"The more commitment to that sort of thing, the better off the profession is going to be," said Patrick McCartan, managing partner at Jones Day in Cleveland. Jones Day is one of the world's largest law firms with 1,300 lawyers in 22 offices.

"Anytime you have schools, either existing or new, that declare a commitment to law and values or law and ethics, that's all to the good," McCartan said. "But law schools also have to produce very sound professional, technical lawyers. That is also a great challenge."

McCartan, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame's law school and soon to be chairman of the university's board, often hires graduates of Notre Dame because, he said -- first, "they're excellent lawyers, prepared to practice law," and second, because of their sensitivity to the ethical and moral dimensions of the law. "We're tired of the scandals, the problems of the past, so apparent in both business and law," he said. "I think there is a developing awareness on the part of professionals as a whole that we need people who have a solid grounding in ethics as well as competence in their particular discipline."

Militantly religious few

The nation's 37 religiously affiliated law schools, 24 of those Catholic, emphasize their religious missions to varying degrees: some hardly at all; some militantly. The militant category, a small one, includes Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. Pepperdine is the school that courted Kenneth Start for its deanship,, almost prompting him to leave his federal post as independent prosecutor assigned to the Clinton case. Affiliated with Churches of Christ, Pepperdine makes no bones about its goal of incorporating Christian beliefs and values into teaching and practicing law.

Ave Maria is expected to fit into the militantly religious category as well. Funded to the tune of $50 million by Domino's Pizza magnate Thomas Monaghan, Ave Maria will clearly have a more conservative religious orientation than any existing Catholic law school in the nation. Its board members include such noted Catholic conservatives as Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput; Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fessio, founder of Ignatius Press; and Fr. Michael Scanlan, president of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. Two of the most conservative members of Notre Dame University's law school are also on the Ave Maria board: Gerald V. Bradley and Charles E. Rice. Ave Maria's right-wing orientation has drawn its share of criticism from more liberal Catholic quarters. Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan, for instance, writing in NCR May 7, accused Ave Maria of a "holier than thou" attitude toward other Catholic law schools.

Ave Maria's new dean, Bernard Dobranski, brushes the criticism aside. "We're not a seminary. We're a law school," he said. "We expect the legal training people will get will be the kind that permits them to walk into-any law firm in the country and be able to do an outstanding job in a purely secular sense. If we can't do that, we aren't doing our job." Dobranski said Ave Maria's substantial funding will allow the school to offer tuition aid, an asset in competition for good students.

Dobranski is former dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America in Washington.

The new law school at the University of St. Thomas will model itself after Notre Dame's highly ranked law school and has hired as its new dean Notre Dame's former dean of 24 years, David T. Link. Notre Dame, along with Georgetown, Fordham and Boston College, is ranked by U.S. News and World Report in the top tier of the nation's 181 American Bar Association-accredited law schools.

Strong Catholic focus

Link said Notre Dame is among schools with a strong and overt Catholic focus. A strong majority of both faculty and students are Catholic. Link said the school actively seeks students with "a values orientation" and is proud to be a place where research and discussion includes "moral analysis of the law."

"We probably do have too many lawyers in this country, and I'm not sure we need new law schools," Link said. "But I do think we need more law schools that operate from a kind of faith base, whether Catholic or some other. Faith-based law schools are searching for the truth involved in the law, with a knowledge of what the ultimate truth is. That provides you with a very different kind of focus. It means you do things not only with a different purpose but with a different method."