Today's Wall Street Journal article on AMSL

Bringing a Law School Down
Should Ave Maria be part of a "Catholic Jonestown"?

BY NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY Friday, November 11, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

Last Saturday, members of the alumni association of the Ave Maria School of Law met in Ann Arbor, Mich. They had learned, in the weeks before, that one of the school's most beloved professors was being kicked off the board of trustees and that the school might relocate to rural Florida. They weren't happy about it. In fact, they were angry.

And little wonder. Why, after all, quibble with success? In September, only five years after the school's founding, the American Bar Association granted full accreditation to Ave Maria, whose mission is to offer "an outstanding legal education in fidelity to the Catholic Faith." Last year a higher percentage of the school's graduates passed the bar exam than the University of Michigan's. But there is more at stake than one school's record. The controversy playing out at Ave Maria echoes a larger debate within Catholic conservatism--over how much to engage with the secular world.

The story began on Sept. 28, when the school's board of trustees voted 12-2 to establish term limits on its members. Among the members affected by the decision, only one had expressed an interest in staying on the board--Prof. Charles Rice, a respected figure on campus. Many alumni, students and faculty members believe that Prof. Rice is being pushed out because of his views. He had voiced strong opposition to an apparent effort by the chairman of the board, Tom Monaghan, to move Ave Maria to Florida.

Mr. Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza and the school's principal benefactor, has announced plans to build a large Catholic university outside Naples, Fla., along with a residential community. (The ground-breaking ceremony for Ave Maria Town, as it will be called, was delayed indefinitely by the recent hurricane.) Will the law school move to Naples too, from Ann Arbor? The school's dean, Bernard Dobranski, acknowledges that the board is "open to consideration of the idea." He denies, though, that Mr. Rice is being persecuted for his views.

Mr. Monaghan certainly has every legal right to move the law school he pays for. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea. "We understood \[that\] the mission of the law school," says Terence McKeegan, a member of the school's alumni association, was "to create attorneys who were well versed in Catholic social teaching and the law, who would engage the world and not retreat from it." Ave Maria Town seems at odds with such a mission. "It sounds like this town and the university in Florida is going to be a self-contained little Catholic enclave."

A May 2004 speech by Mr. Monaghan, given at a conference on business ethics, would seem to confirm this speculation. "We'll own all commercial real estate," Mr. Monaghan declared, describing his vision. "That means we will be able to control what goes on there. You won't be able to buy a Playboy or Hustler magazine in Ave Maria Town. We're going to control the cable television that comes in the area. There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town. If you go to the drug store and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception, you won't be able to get that in Ave Maria Town."

Oddly, Paul Marinelli, Mr. Monaghan's development partner for the town's 11,000 residential units, is unaware of these plans. All he will say, in an interview, is that his company, Barron Collier, is planning a "town based on traditional family values." He doesn't believe that "adult bookstores or pornography" are "aligned with traditional family values," but he has no plans to restrict them.

There is reason to suspect, though, that Mr. Monaghan will get his way and create what one Ave Maria faculty member, hyperbolically, referred to as a "Catholic Jonestown." Mr. Monaghan is not a timid man. He has owned, at various times, a large corporation, a major-league baseball team and an island resort. "There are not many out there who are really authentic Catholics," he said in the same speech. Creating them "is what I plan to do in the rest of my life."

Where does that leave the faculty, students and alumni of the law school? Most consider themselves authentic Catholics, despite their desire to live in secular communities. David Krause, for instance, was in the law school's first graduating class in 2003, having left his job as a mechanical engineer in Louisiana and moved with his wife and three children to Michigan to attend Ave Maria. He laments that the school's graduates, at the moment, "don't have the financial means to affect the school." But he does want the alumni to take a strong stand and even consider officially dissociating themselves from Ave Maria Law School to protest the insularity of the Florida move. "I'm not willing to see something that we have invested in and taken risks for implode because of one man's desires."

It looks, then, as though Mr. Monaghan has a fight on his hands. But he should not be surprised. If you create smart, ethical lawyers, you may find that they practice due diligence.

Ms. Riley is the deputy Taste-page editor and the author of "God on the Quad."

Full article on the WSJ website can be found here.

UPDATE:
The WSJ article is generating considerable feedback on many different blogs:

The Volokh Conspiracy:
http://volokh.com/posts/1131725216.shtml

Ann Althouse:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/11/we-will-be-able-to-control-what-goes.html

FUMARE:
http://fumare.blogspot.com/2005/11/wall-street-journal-piece-on-amsol.html