ABA Awards Provisional Accreditation to Christian Law School
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
February 15, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Less than two years after it opened, the training ground for Christian lawyers at the largest evangelical university in the world has reached a milestone. It was a short 18 months ago -- August 2004 -- when the Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Virginia, opened its doors to those wishing to learn constitutional law based on a Christian worldview. Now the American Bar Association (ABA) has granted the school provisional accreditation, meaning the Law School has met each of the ABA's rigorous standards for the approval of law schools, and has a plan to reach full compliance with those standards in three years.
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Bruce Green
Dean, LU School of Law |
It also means that graduates of the Liberty program will be granted the same rights and responsibilities as students graduating from a fully accredited law school. The School of Law -- the eighth college at the school founded by Dr. Jerry Falwell in 1971 -- will graduate its first class in May 2007. According to a press release from Liberty Counsel, which operates the Center for Constitutional Litigation and Policy on the Lynchburg campus, ABA accreditation involves a "rigorous self-study process, site visits, written reports and appearances" before an ABA committee. An ABA site team, says the press release, found the School of Law to be "propelled by a refreshing excitement, energy, and devoted sense of purpose."
How Does Accreditation Benefit the Students?
Bruce Green, founding dean of the Law School, says ABA accreditation means more opportunities for students -- and an assurance they are getting a sound education.
"They can have a measure of confidence in the quality of the program that's been reviewed by the ABA," says Green. "Then with the particular Christian emphasis on Christian worldview at the Law School, they know they're going to get a perspective that does not separate law from morals and from the Christian faith." That, says Green, will better prepare the prospective attorneys to "engage the culture and make a difference."
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Dean Bruce Green teaching Foundation of Law at Liberty University |
Under the provisional accreditation, Liberty Law School graduates will be allowed to sit for the bar examination in any state. Green explains why that can be a plus for his graduates. "They know ... that they can take a bar examination of their choice," he says. "If a young person comes from any place in the United States now, they know if they wish to, they can look for a job in their home area and go back and know that they'll be able to take that bar examination and engage the culture right where they are."
Green's contribution to the success and accreditation of the Liberty University School of Law in such a short time is not going unnoticed by one of his colleagues in the Christian community. Steve Crampton is chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, where Green once worked.
"Having had the privilege of working with Bruce Green several years and knowing him as a dear friend, I am not surprised that he could accomplish such an enormous and difficult task, with limited resources and insufficient time and under tremendous pressure -- both from within and without," Crampton says. "He has established a lasting legacy at Liberty University, and we are all beneficiaries of his excellent work."
Less than 200 schools in America carry the ABA accreditation. The university says it is "virtually unprecedented" for a new law school to achieve provisional accreditation so soon after the arrival of its first students. The School of Law applied for provisional accreditation in August 2005, which was the soonest allowed under ABA guidelines.
