As the controversy over David Barton’s shoddy scholarship has roiled for the last several weeks, Mat Staver, dean of the Liberty University Law School, has been one of Barton’s most ardent defenders, declaring that he “would put [his] money on David Barton any day” and even proclaiming that he’d be willing to put Barton up “against any historian and would have no question who would win in a debate.”
So it was no surprise that Staver was the guest on “WallBuilders Live” today where he spent most of the time attacking one of Barton’s main critic Warren Throckmorton, for not being a historian. Of course, Barton is not a historian either and neither is Staver, for that matter.
But Staver did make an interesting revelation on the program when he explained that Barton’s book “Original Intent” is required reading for every law student at Liberty Law School:
We actually use his book “Original Intent” in one of our law school classes. We have a lot of different resources and certainly one of those resources regarding original intent and the Founder’s vision and views for this country, we use David Barton’s book.
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In “Foundations of Law” at Liberty University School of Law that every first year law school student goes through the first semester, we have David Barton’s book as one of the books, and we have excerpts from that and chapters from it that we use. And our law school students read that and we talk about it and we look at the historical issues involving the Founders.
I began using that when I was teaching the course and now our Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Rena Lindevaldsen, uses that. One of our professors, Cynthia Dunbar, she uses that book in that “Foundations of Law” course as well and I know that there’s other faculty at Liberty University that also are very much advocates of David Barton’s work.
