Paul M. Hebert Law Center
The Paul M. Hebert Law Center is a law school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, part of the Louisiana State University System and located on the main campus of Louisiana State University. It was founded in 1906. Because Louisiana is a civil law state, unlike its 49 common law sister states, the curriculum includes both civil law and common law courses, requiring 97 hours for graduation, the most in the United States. In fact, since Fall 2002, the LSU Law Center became the sole United States law school and only one of two law schools in the Western Hemisphere to offer a course of study leading to the simultaneous conferring of two degrees: the J.D. (Juris Doctor), which is the normal first degree in American law schools, and the B.C.L. (Bachelor of Civil Law), which recognizes the training its students receive in both the Common and the Civil Law.
The Law Center is named after Dean Paul M. Hebert [1] (1907-1977), the longest serving Dean of the LSU Law School, serving in that role (with brief interruptions) from 1937 until his death in 1977. One of these interruptions occurred in 1947-1948 when he was appointed as a judge for the United States Military Tribunals in Nuremberg.
The Paul M. Hebert Law Center is unique among university-affiliated law schools because it is an autonomous campus of, rather than a dependent college of, its larger university. Its designation as a Law Center, rather than Law School, derives not only from its campus status but from the centralization on its campus of J.D. and post-J.D. programs, Foreign and Graduate programs, including European programs at the University of Lyon III School of Law, Lyon, France, and Louvain Belgium, and the direction of the Louisiana Law Institute and the Louisiana Judicial College, among other initiatives. From its founding in 1906, the Law Center has offered its students a legal education recognized for its high standards of academic excellence, an outstanding teaching and research faculty, and integrated programs in Louisiana civil law, in Anglo-American common, statute and federal law, and, through a fusion of these programs with international and comparative law, an overall program that truly merits designation as a global law curriculum.
The Paul M. Hebert Law Center owes its distinction among the nation's great law schools to the special character of Louisiana's legal system. Dating from the state's admission into the United States in 1812, this system traces not only to Anglo-American sources in the Common Law but to the Civil Law, a blend of Roman, Spanish, and French legal traditions. Louisiana law, therefore, is global because the Civil Law underpins the legal institutions of Continental nations and their former colonies throughout the world. It is national because federal constitutional and statutory law are the governing component of the nation's 50 states. And, it is statewide insofar as the laws of Louisiana are an appropriate object of study for the state's leading public law school.
A scandal erupted in fall 2005 when Student Bar Association President Jacob Gardner inadvertantly forwarded an allegedly racist e-mail titled "Ghetto Spelling Bee" to members of the Black Law Student Association. After an uproar and significant media attention, the issue was resolved when Chancellor John J. Costonis removed Gardner from his Student Bar Association position.
Famous Alumni
- Edwin Edwards, Four Term Governor of Louisiana. Prisoner. Convicted of extortion, racketeering, and fraud.
- James Carville, American political consultant, commentator and pundit
- John Breaux, United States Senator from Louisiana from 1987 until 2005
- Russell B. Long, American politician who served in the United States Senate from Louisiana from 1948 to 1987
- Wilbert Joseph Tauzin Jr., American Politician who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1980 to 2005
- Gillis W. Long United States Representative during the 1960's.
- Speedy Oteria Long United States Representative from 1965 to 1973.
- Patrick Thomas Caffery United States Representative from 1969 to 1973
- John Bennet Johnston Jr. United States Senator from 1972 to 1997.
- Anthony Claude Leach Jr. United States Representative from 1979-1981.
- James O McCrery III United States Representative from 1988 to present.
- William Henson Moore United States Representative from 1975 tp 1987. Unsuccessful Republican candidate for the United States Senate; Commissioner, Panama Canal Consultative Committee, 1987-1989; Deputy Secretary of Energy, 1989-1992; White House deputy chief of staff, 1992-1993; professional advocate.
- Bernette Johnson, Louisiana Supreme Court Justice
- Catherine D. "Kitty" Kimball, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Louisiana
- John L. Weimer, Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Louisiana