The Religification Of Our Legal System
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Law, ReligionThey really just don’t get it…
Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” has worked hard in its two-decade history to upgrade its reputation, fighting past years when a majority of its graduates couldn’t pass the bar exam and leading up to recent victories over Ivy League teams in national law student competitions.But even in its darker days, Regent has had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website. [...]
Not long ago, it was rare for Regent graduates to join the federal government. But in 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent’s government school, Kay Coles James , to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management — essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.
“We’ve had great placement,” said Jay Sekulow , who heads a non profit law firm based at Regent that files lawsuits aimed at lowering barriers between church and state. “We’ve had a lot of people in key positions.”
*sigh*
UPDATE:
And so we have this July 2006 Boston Globe article about the politicizing of our Civil Rights division…key graph bolded:
The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.
In an acknowledgment of the department’s special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants — not political appointees.
But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers.
One of the things this administration will go down in history for is their craven hiring process. Especially post 9/11, they continued to employ those who were most likely woefully unqualified simply because they could be counted on to be politically obedient.
People, this is atrocious policy. I hope it becomes a major campaign issue in 2008.
One last note…
At the same time, the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians.
Nice.
Now, some may think I have a problem with devout Christian lawyers. I don’t. I have a problem with lawyers who are hired BECAUSE they come from devout Christian institutions…and I think the evidence is pretty clear that’s what happened here. Especially because they don’t seem to have the necessary qualificiations for their positions and the checks and balances to make sure they had those qualifications were removed.
What do you think?
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 and is filed under Law, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 8th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
THANK YOU for posting this. I kept on reading about “Regent” and wondered what was up in Washington and why were all these attorneys (who will probably be resigning soon if not already) coming to D.C. from this law school I was not even aware of. Now things kind of make sense.
April 8th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
It’s just so damn infuriating, but that’s pretty much par for course with this administration.
April 8th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
What is infuriating is trying to decipher a particular argument or complaint out of “*sign*” — are you capable of articulate an actual argument here or is just: I hate Christians and Christian Lawyers should not work for the federal government.” The level snarkiness is directly related to the level vagueness…please explain.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:13 am
The administration is hiring politically obedient lawyers, not the BEST lawyers. That’s *sigh*worthy I think, yes?
I’ve added some more info to this post. Read it and tell me what you think.
April 10th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
[...] It gets worse. As it turns out, Goodling was one of a cadre of 150 Regent University graduates hired by the Bush administration. Apparently, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had to completely overhaul hiring procedures at the Justice Department to accommodate the Regent grads, because they otherwise would have lacked the qualifications to serve in the department. [...]