Johnson vouched for the school, and agreed to serve as its dean, without seeing a key feasibility study, he would ultimately admit.
House Speaker Mike Johnson makes no mention of his tenure as dean of a never-opened law school in Louisiana in his biography.
The feasibility study was a “hodgepodge collection of papers,” with “nothing in existence” related to the need for the new law school, market studies, or “funding sources and prospects,” Johnson wrote the following year, describing the episode in what he called a “confidential memorandum” responding to questions from the Louisiana College Board of Trustees
the blame for the law school’s failure on Johnson, according to a memo written at the time by another board member, Heath Veuleman. Aguillard said that Johnson’s resignation was a selfish decision to pursue a “dream job,” according to the memo,Aguillard also blamed Johnson’s resignation “for the Law School’s present delays in opening its doors.” After leaving the school, Johnson said in a memo that he had accepted a job at a conservative legal institute in the Dallas area.
That vision was in line with the traditions of the parent college, which was founded in the early 1900s by a Baptist clergyman. The college had long aspired to open a law school, but those efforts advanced considerably under Aguillard, who became president in 2005. The school was to open in 2012 in a Shreveport office building that required extensive renovation, including asbestos removal, a cost borne by Louisiana College. The plan was then to raise at least $20 million and as much as $50 million to support the law school, according to news accounts at the time.
Johnson wrote in his memo that the “unrest” on campus was shocking, but others said he should have been well aware of the turmoil from news reports about threats to the college’s accreditation. The problem was that he had never seen the study, notwithstanding his bold statement more than a year earlier that the school’s feasibility was beyond question.
and realize that it undercut his rationale for opening the school, adding in a footnote that he was “deeply disturbed” that most trustees had never seen it.
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