Paul M. Hebert Law Center

Facade of the 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.

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 the Fall of 2002, the LSU Law Center became the sole United States law school, and only one of two law schools in the Western Hemisphere, offering a course of study leading to the simultaneous conferring of a J.D. (Juris Doctor), which is the normal first degree in American law schools, and a B.C.L. (Bachelor of Civil Law), which recognizes the training its students receive in both the Common and the Civil Law.

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. This strucuture has been criticizedTemplate:Fact for impeding the development of joint degree programs and indirectly lowering the university's rankings due to a lowering of aggregate aid to the university system. 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.

History[edit | edit source]

The Louisiana State University Law School was founded in 1906 as a whites only institution. It was ordered desegregated in 1951 by Judge J. Skelly Wright. The Law Center was renamed in honor of 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.

Famous alumni[edit | edit source]

• 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, lobbyist, citizen of Maryland
• James L. Dennis, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit judge
• 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 1960s.
• Speedy Oteria Long United States Representative from 1965 to 1973.
• Patrick Thomas Caffery United States Representative from 1969 to 1973
• Bennett 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 to 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

See also[edit | edit source]

• Joseph T. Bockrath

Reference[edit | edit source]

• W. Lee Hargrave. LSU Law: The Louisiana State University Law School from 1906 to 1977. Louisiana State University Press, 2004.

External links[edit | edit source]

• LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center