Law School in Shreveport
On September 1, 2010, Louisiana College announced that it is building in downtown Shreveport the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, named for the former justice of the Texas Court of Appeals from Houston, Paul Pressler, a long-time leader of the theological conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention. J. Michael Johnson is the founding dean of the new institution. The formation of the law school was originally announced in 2007.
LC expects to place the law school in the former federal building named for the late U.S. Representative Joe D. Waggonner, Jr. Currently there is no law school within two hundred miles of the planned location. Johnson said that the school will "pursue academic excellence by use of a curriculum that directly acknowledges and embraces our Judeo-Christian heritage and the moral foundations of the American legal system. We want our students to learn and to study the history and philosophy of the law, but all of that will be grounded in what we call 'The Unchanging Foundation.' That is the motto of Lousiana College, and it will be for the law school as well."
Johnson said that the curriculum will be grounded on the ideas of the Declaration of Independence: a Creator God with inalienable rights. The American Founding Fathers, said Johnson, "believed if we moved away from those truths, and the Natural law philosophy, we would be in trouble . . . So their admonition to us was to . . . interpret the Constitution very carefully and according to its original intent because if we fail to do that, we would drift away from the moorings. It is a perilous position, and that is where we find outselves today."
A board of reference has been named to advise regarding the establishment of the law school, including the two area U.S. Representatives John C. Fleming and Rodney Alexander. Others on the board include Alveda C. King, founder of King for America, Inc.; Tim LaHaye of Tim LaHaye Ministries, Beverly LaHaye of Concerned Women for America, psychologist James C. Dobson, David Barton of the group Wallbuilders, former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Associate Justice Jeffrey P. Victory of the Louisiana Supreme Court, and Richard Land, the president of the SBC Liberty Commission.
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