Conclusion

This chapter is primarily interested in measures of success. It thus considers the generalizable utility of the models that structured the larger inquiry and evaluates the specific moves made to build legal support structures for the Christian Right. The chapter starts by revisiting the strategies of creating new institutions as well as their virtues and limitations. It then uses the central case studies to argue that the Alliance Defending Freedom’s supplemental approach taken in the form of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship is the most obviously successful by various measures, but that the collective case studies argue for various market considerations that can influence the value of pursuing the parallel alternative approach. Finally, the chapter concludes by arguing that while the institutions struggle when assessed by traditional metrics of success and prestige, their value is best understood via a lens of continued resistance appreciated by the Christian Right.

The Frankfurter Adage (or, Why Legal Movements Need Support Structures)

Aggregating insights from Support Structure Theory and introducing others based on original research, this chapter introduces the Support Structure Pyramid. This is a model for conceptualizing litigation-based movement support structures, institutions, and their relationship to legal change. Additionally, this chapter presents three support structure types or strategies—infiltration, supplemental, and parallel alternative. Each of these strategies represents a different way to approach the problem of organizational or institutional creation. This typology of strategies is a way of understanding and contextualizing the choices and initial decisions of Christian Right movement leaders and patrons when they decided to consciously invest in institution building as a means of bolstering the legal support structure for their movement.

In the Beginning: Creation Stories

This chapter outlines the visions for the intentionally transformative missions—or “Christian Worldviews”—of newly created Christian conservative law schools and training programs. It gives detailed institutional histories of Regent Law School, Liberty Law School, Ave Maria School of Law, and Alliance Defending Freedom’s Blackstone Legal Fellowship. The chapter also previews some of the constraints and challenges these institutions faced initially (and continue to face) in attempting to realize their transformative missions. Principally, these constraints relate to finances and patronage, accreditation, financial aid, and licensing requirements for attorneys. The chapter then relates these constraints back to the Support Structure Pyramid.

The Apex of the Support Structure Pyramid

This chapter investigates the abilities of Christian Worldview law schools and legal training programs to access courts. To capture a more complete picture of this dynamic, it charts the general cartography of Christian Worldview faculty participation in state and federal litigation as both litigators and as amici curiae. This map of Christian Worldview faculty participation in litigation helps identify potential “conduits” through which ideas or intellectual capital can be transmitted or diffused to judicial decision-makers. Additionally, because intellectual capital need not travel through a Christian Worldview conduit to be useful to judicial decision-makers, this analysis also examines court briefs and judicial opinions for citations to Christian Worldview faculty. The chapter finds that with the exception of five exceptionally active and well-connected faculty, the Christian Worldview faculties are not well-represented when it comes to direct litigation.

The Genesis of the Christian Conservative Legal Movement and the Road Not Taken

This chapter addresses larger political contexts, conditions, actors, and institutions that gave rise to the modern Christian Right and the Christian Conservative Legal Movement. In relaying this history, the chapter discusses how and why the Christian Right first invested in traditional politics and then later moved to develop Christian conservative public interest legal organizations. This history is then used to explain the deficiencies in the Christian Right’s initial legal support structures, and why they moved to found Christian conservative law schools and legal training programs. Central to the decision to create new institutions was Christian conservatives’ long-standing mistrust of lawyers, the legal profession, and the nation’s colleges and universities. Baylor University and University of Notre Dame are used as brief case studies to better explain the decision of Christian Right patrons to avoid investing in existing law schools and, instead, create their own.

Intellectual Capital: Preaching to Convert, or to the Converted?

This chapter analyzes the production and dissemination of intellectual capital for the Christian Conservative Legal Movement. In doing so, the chapter takes multiple approaches to conceiving of and measuring scholarship. First, in considering scholarship’s link to prestige, the chapter examines the extent to which faculty at newly created Christian conservative law schools are publishing scholarly work, where they are publishing such work, and how often it is being cited. In order to provide context, the faculty scholarship from Christian conservative law schools is compared with faculty scholarship from a range of other law schools. Second, in thinking of Christian Worldview scholarship as a movement resource, the chapter also measures faculty scholarship and the schools’ in-house journals as means for producing such resources, for creating an intellectual movement, and for inserting Christian Worldview ideas into broader scholarly discussion.

Social and Cultural Capital (or “Credibility Capital”)

This chapter analyzes the actual and potential production of two dimensions of “credibility capital”—social capital and cultural capital. To gauge social capital, the chapter looks at the extent to which newly created Christian conservative law schools are networked both with Christian Right movement institutions and with other more mainstream elite conservative institutions and networks like the Federalist Society. To measure cultural capital, the chapter looks at print media appearances for the faculty of each of these institutions. How often and in which media outlets are these faculty engaging with broader publics through Op-eds or by being quoted and cited as experts? Comparisons are drawn along both these dimensions with institutions representative of the rejected supplemental (Blackstone) and infiltration (Notre Dame and Baylor) options.

Human Capital (or, “A Generation of Christian Attorneys”)

This chapter explores newly created Christian Worldview institutions’ efforts and success at recruitment of human capital, highlighting the importance of having faculty committed to the mission as well as a critical mass of “mission students” as opposed to “non-mission students.” In doing so, we introduce their re-conception of diversity as being diversity among law schools and their distinctiveness within the legal market writ large as opposed to diversity within a given law school. This chapter also examines each institution’s core “mission” courses as well as how biblical themes and readings are integrated into other courses throughout the curriculum. Finally, the chapter presents initial data on the relative and collective output of human capital for the Christian conservative legal movement. This is measured via counts of how many graduates are licensed attorneys, what kind of law they go on to practice, and whether they go on to become “culture warriors.”

Introduction

Using Regent Law School’s founding dean, Herb Titus, as an example, the book’s introduction lays out the aspirations and challenges facing the creation of “Christian Worldview” law schools and training programs. These institutions seek to promote and reinforce a vision of law rooted in Christianity and biblical principles, which challenges and sometimes rejects the premises of “secular legalism” that have been embraced in America and the Western world since the nineteenth century. These law schools add to the ranks of institutions meant to enable the Christian Right to pursue short- and long-term policy goals in a broader set of political venues. After briefly introducing the book’s primary case studies—Regent Law School, Liberty Law School, Ave Maria School of Law, and Alliance Defending Freedom’s Blackstone Legal Fellowship—the book’s central questions and the arc of the response are summarized. In doing so, the authors also introduce the book’s primary theoretical contributions.