UNIDENTIFIED PROFESSOR (praying): Heavenly Father, thou has placed me in a church which thy Son has purchased with his own blood.
LUCKY SEVERSON: It's abundantly clear that this is not your typical law school. Each and every class at Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach begins with prayer. And it doesn't end there. This is Dean Jeffrey Brauch.Dean JEFFREY BRAUCH (Regent University School of Law): We are adding something in addition to what you would get in another law school, and that is Christian thinking on the substance of law and Christian thinking on how to practice law.
SEVERSON: There are about 500 law students at Regent. They learn the law of the land and also a higher law, based on conservative Christian interpretation of biblical principles. If there's a conflict, some might even turn down cases because of their religious beliefs.
(to student Nicole Jocobo): So who is the ultimate judge, as far as you are concerned?
NICOLE JOCOBO (student, Regent University School of Law): God.
SEVERSON: Nicole Jocobo is a third-year student from Florida. Emily Joy Smith is also in her third year. She's from Georgia.
EMILY JOY SMITH (student, Regent University School of Law): I am going to view every perspective, every situation, every client that walks in my office through kind of glasses that are Christ-colored.SEVERSON: Regent University was founded by Pat Robertson 20 years ago. The law school opened in 1996. Robertson says his overall plan was the Lord's idea -- a way to counter the country's drift toward what Robertson calls "unbridled hedonism" and restore society to what he says were its original Judeo-Christian values.
Reverend PAT ROBERTSON (founder, Regent University): The idea was to challenge the culture in the areas that are most important to people. The first, of course, was television, and then the theatre and journalism, and then, of course, beyond that was law, which has such a dramatic effect on everybody's lives.
SEVERSON: The law school boasts graduates working in all levels of state and federal government, also as judges, prosecutors, state representatives, lawyers for the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is now part of the Regent faculty.
Rev. ROBERTSON: I was just overwhelmed at the steamroller of the ACLU. And they were just getting away with murder. They were stripping our society of its religious symbolism all the way up and down the line.SEVERSON: To combat the American Civil Liberties Union, Robertson founded the American Center for Law and Justice -- that's the ACLJ, not the ACLU. The ACLJ has argued and won several cases before the High Court, including the right to organize Bible clubs in public schools. Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel, has been asked by President Bush to help shepherd Judge John Roberts through the confirmation process. Sekulow considers himself a conservative Christian who thinks most law schools are too liberal.
JAY SEKULOW (chief counsel, American Center for Law and Justice): Oh, I think there was a huge need for law schools that have a conservative judicial philosophy to become players in the law school area and the law school arena and to be able to train law students.SEVERSON: Regent was the first of the conservative Christian law schools but not the last. In Michigan, the Ave Maria Catholic Law School was recently granted accreditation. And the Reverend Jerry Falwell is awaiting accreditation for his new law school at Liberty University. Many conservative Christians see this as a way of getting their values put into law. Others say it's a troubling erosion of the separation of church and state.
Professor Marci Hamilton is a constitutional scholar at the Cardozo School of Law in New York. She clerked for Justice O'Connor and describes herself as a conservative Goldwater Republican and a very religious Presbyterian. She says she once believed in religious liberty at any cost but became disillusioned with abuses in the name of religion.
Professor MARCI HAMILTON (constitutional scholar, Cardozo School of Law): They found their religious power, a cadre of them, conservative Christians. They have decided that the culture doesn't reflect their values, and so they are going to use a law school to inculcate their values.SEVERSON: Does that trouble you?
Prof. HAMILTON: It's deeply troubling. What they've done is they've now blurred the lines -- forget the separation of church and state.
ROGER BYRON (student, Regent University School of Law): I would approach ROE V. WADE in that -- whereas the Supreme Court did make a decision to apparently legalize abortion that in fact is not a proper law. While the Supreme Court may have said it is one, it does not necessarily mean that it is one.
Dean BRAUCH: It's not our sole mission to send people out who are going to affect public policy. I also want men and women who are going to be great lawyers who would have been there to say something when Arthur Anderson or Enron or Tyco or those cases or the decisions made in those situations came up.
Rev. ROBERTSON: Over a hundred years the impact of the Supreme Court decision will be vastly greater than the impact of Osama bin Laden. He's a temporary annoyance who we are going to get rid of.
SEVERSON: And if Judge Roberts is confirmed, Jay Sekulow will be arguing one of the first cases before the court involving anti-abortion protestors. And there are two more important cases involving parental consent for teenagers seeking abortions and assisted suicide coming up. Lawyers on both sides are working overtime, and in the thick of it are conservative Christian lawyers.
