Academia, Bizarre, Justice, Lawyering

Gonzales Hired To Teach At Unaccredited Belmont Law School in Tennessee

While former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been able to escape investigation and prosecution for his role in the torture program, no law firms or ranking law schools wanted to touch him as he sought gainful employment. Gonzales has been struggling to find someone who wants to be represented or taught by an individual ridiculed for politicizing the Justice Department and bringing in hacks who were accused of a variety of criminal and ethical violations. Well, he finally found one school. Belmont University has created an unaccredited law school in Tennessee. Its new Doyle Rogers Distinguished Chair of Law is no one else than Alberto Gonzales.

Presumably, the “Distinguished” refers to the chair rather than the holder.

Belmont College of Law Founding Dean Jeff Kinsler insisted that Gonzales has what it takes to be “an outstanding professor.” So long as he does not waterboard the students.

What is truly scary is is Gonzales’ pledge to help “develop tomorrow’s leaders in the bar, the Nashville community and beyond.” The idea of Gonzales shaping lawyers is enough to force one into a fetal position.

Nevertheless, Doyle Rogers’ wife, Barbara Massey Rogers is ecstatic: “I thought it fitting and most appropriate to recognize a man of his stature and accomplishments in the legal profession at the opening of the new law school at Belmont University, a university very close to my heart.” “Of his stature and accomplishments”? He is on the top of the list in various countries as an alleged war criminal and was the target of the Spanish war crimes investigation until the Obama Administration coerced the Spaniards to block the prosecution. He is viewed by conservatives and liberal lawyers alike of destroying the professionalism and morale of the Justice Department by hiring exceptionally low quality lawyers who were selected for their blind loyalty to the President.

Here is the school’s press release.

I know little about Belmont University or its law school. However, it is a disgraceful start of any institution committed to teaching the rule of law by hiring a man viewed as its very antithesis. Here is a more relevant quote for the next press release from Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).:

In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.

Source: Tennessean

56 thoughts on “Gonzales Hired To Teach At Unaccredited Belmont Law School in Tennessee”

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  5. He should have very soon a Constitution Law scholar, Nobel laureate – Advocat Barak Obama, as a colleague.

    Amen

  6. I actually know something about Belmont U, which is four blocks down the street from where I’m writing this. It’s actually not a bad school in many respects. It identifies itself as “Christian,” but has detached itself from its old affiliation with the Tennessee State Baptist Convention, and is in no sense religious-right. It primarily sells itself as a school with an in to the Nashville music industry, which is right on its doorstep; as a result, it has a student body that in many respects is decidedly countercultural. You may recall there was a brouhaha last year over their firing of a popular women’s soccer coach who was lesbian; while they didn’t rehire her, they modified their GLBT policies after getting the riot act read to them by one of their big funders, the normally right-wing record mogul Mike Curb, who pointed out that it’s inconceivable to have a articitc community of any sort without GLBTS.

    Belmont’s big problem is that it has much bigger ambitions than it can handle; it’s in the shadow of Vanderbilt [also on its doorstep], and is constantly looking for ways to make a splash [for instance, hosting the second presidential debate in 2008]. It also tends to be heavily dependent on a few major funders, like Curb or the Massey family, with which it has long had close ties. It has a classically entrepreneurial president who doesn’t always recognize the difference between a university [or a neighborhood, for that matter–don’t get me going] and a personal empire. Add to this the fact that this is a brand-new law school [the building is still under construction] not yet accredited [it’s really unfair to call it “unaccredited” when it’s still getting organized, BTW], and with no faculty as yet to push back against this, and one can see all too well how this could happen. I’m frankly puzzled as to why Nashville actually needs another law school anyway, but then so are a lot of my friends on the Belmont faculty.

  7. as I read the press release by Belmont, the quote by Roger’s wife cited by Turley was not meant to be praise of Gonzales, but was, rather praise of her husband’s accomplishments.

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  12. It’s interesting that he sank so low as to teach at a Christian law school, and then could get accepted by either Pat Robertson’s Regent School of Law or Liberty University School of Law. I guess they wanted to keep their accreditation with the ABA.

  13. If the “Law School” gig doesn’t work out for Alberto Gonzales, he can join Fred Thompson, Pat Boone, and Fonzie in the reverse mortgage spokesperson racket. He might have a problem learning his lines though, with that bad memory of his. The phony sincerity part he has already mastered.

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