Endorsements

“I truly looked forward to Tuesday night classes with Dr. Emmerich where three hours felt like five minutes. Dr. Emmerich treated us like professionals and lawyers, setting high expectations but also empowering us to meet them. His classes are taught socratically, and we were reading materials that are often used at the JD and LLM level. Looking back as a current law student now, I read more for his classes than some of the ones I’m in now, but Dr. Emmerich also ensured that we understood what we were reading and why. When I started law school, I was far more confident than other first-year students because I had been taught to advocate for my position, understand difficult cases and readings, and work hard to prepare for classes.

Specifically, I knew how to brief cases, issue-spot, make an argument on the spot, advocate zealously but respectfully, critically think about complex problems, and ask questions as often as needed. These are all skills that I have used to succeed in my big-law summer internship, to receive several offers from the most competitive federal government internship program, to argue in federal court early in my law career, to be an executive on the Idaho Law Review, to win numerous awards, and to be ranked in the top three of my class. The legal studies program truly prepares you for a career by teaching practical skills, but also by motivating students to see our education as a stepping stone to a career of Biblical service.”

“The Center for Law and Culture offers creative and comprehensive consideration of the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our law and culture. Hence, a search for the truth forms the core of the Center’s curriculum and mission. While dispelling the fallacious notions of secularism and relativism, the Center remains steadfastly dedicated to keener understandings of what truth requires of us in the service of God, in nurturing His creation, and in loving one another. The Center for Law and Culture offers truly meaningful educational endeavors.”

“Law schools train students to interpret current law, but no school can make experts in what should become law. Instead, those are moral questions, requiring deep understanding of the historic traditions of ethics, morality, and religion, which provide the framework for bringing justice to social life. Institutions like the Center for Law and Culture are vital for focusing students on these larger questions, and its Law, Justice and Culture Institute helps students develop a critical sense of the moral order underlying creation. For more than 20 years I have known Charlie Emmerich, and have seen his passion in action as he inspires students to reflect on the deeper meanings of faith, law, and government. Such endeavors are essential in instilling in the next generation a vision of law and public service as a sacred, honorable calling, and to restoring the idea of God’s justice and mercy to the purpose of the law.”

“God calls us ‘to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8). The Center for Law and Culture equips students to do just that. Professor Charlie Emmerich has many years of experience in rooting young lawyers in the Judeo-Christian principles that enable them to practice law rightly. A career in law is a gift from God that specially positions lawyers to honor God, serve their neighbors, and protect the world. Professor Emmerich helps students see the opportunities before them as the gifts—and responsibilities—that they are.

Of particular distinction is the Center’s Creation Care and Stewardship Program, which highlights Dr. Susan Emmerich’s pioneering work on faith-based stewardship. This work has not only made important contributions to scholarship, but has also made a real difference on the ground in multiple communities. In short, the Center’s Creation Care and Stewardship Program actively promotes the protection of God’s beautiful and fruitful Earth, all to the glory of the magnificent Creator.”

“The Center, through the commitment of Professor Charlie Emmerich, has had a profound work in the lives of many, like me, who have been much better equipped, educated, and inspired to influence the legal profession. Professor Emmerich has personally mentored and taught numerous students to serve as salt and light in a profession deeply in need of moral leadership. The Center plays a particularly strategic role because it reaches students during a formative stage of life, thereby enabling them to effectively glorify God in public life. Personally, there is no one who prepared me more to follow Christ in law school and as a law professor than Charlie Emmerich.”

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“As a law professor, I am thrilled that the Center for Law and Culture is providing undergraduates and law students with rigorous training in Judeo-Christian legal values. Many law schools shy away from discussing this subject because they consider it either irrelevant or divisive. It is impossible, however, to comprehend Anglo-American legal culture without understanding its foundational assumptions. One does not have to agree with Sir William Blackstone that the common law incorporates Christianity to believe that, at a minimum, Judeo-Christian moral values exerted a profound influence first on English common law and then on American constitutional and legal structure. It is particularly encouraging that Professor Charlie Emmerich is deploying his considerable talents, experience, and vision to train young men and women in the intellectual, spiritual, and moral values that are critical to the future leaders of the Bar and the nation.”