Prof. Paul Richard Baier

Professor Baier, an editor of Harvard Legal Commentary while at Harvard Law School, joined the LSU Law faculty in 1972 after teaching at the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Tennessee College of Law.

The Judicial Fellows Commission selected Professor Baier from ten finalists to serve as the U.S. Supreme Court Fellow for 1975-76, during which time he scripted and narrated “Supreme Court," the first film ever made inside the Supreme Court. This award-winning A.B.A. production was exhibited at the court for over a decade. Professor Baier’s expertise lies in Constitutional Law, Civil Rights Litigation, and Appellate Advocacy. He was a Special Assistant State Attorney General in several U.S. Supreme Court and 5th Circuit cases, including the Louisiana Higher Education Desegregation Case. He served as Executive Director, Louisiana Bicentennial Commission, U.S. Constitution, 1987-91, and was selected as the first Scholar in Residence of the Louisiana Bar Foundation, 1990-92.

He is the editor of the memoirs of Justice Hugo Black, "Mr. Justice and Mrs. Black" (Random House 1986), and of "Lions Under the Throne: The Edward Douglass White Lectures of Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist" (Louisiana Bar Foundation, 1995). He has taught summer programs with Justice Harry A. Blackmun (Aix-en-Provence, France, Berlin, Germany) and with Justice Antonin Scalia (Siena, Italy). For a sample of his writing see: "The Court and Its Critics," Feb. '92, A.B.A.J. Professor

Baier is also a nationally published playwright, producer, and director of “Father Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White and the Constitution," which premiered in Thibodaux, March 8, 1997, and has since played at Louisiana’s Old State Capitol, Loyola University, the Louisiana Supreme Court, and the Fifth Circuit Judicial Conference, May 2009. Aspen Publishers printed a limited centenary edition of the play and sponsored a performance in the Louisiana Supreme Court on Twelfth Night, Jan. 6, 2010.  Most recently, on March 8, 2011, the Law Library of Congress sponsored a production of the play in the Coolidge Auditorium, Jefferson Building, in Washington, D.C.

Baier has several media credits, including “Court Reports,” a film historiography of the U.S Supreme Court in National Archives newsreels, and a television production featuring Erwin N. Griswold, former Solicitor General and Dean of the Harvard Law School. He is nationally known for his use of media in law school teaching, "What Is the Use of a Law Book Without Pictures or Conversations," 34 J. Legal Ed. 619 (1984). The Diamond Anniversary Sixth Edition of Baier’s "The Pocket Constitutionalist," with a foreword by his former student and Louisiana Supreme Court Justice John L. Weimer, was published by Claitor's in 2010.

Professor Baier is Secretary of the Supreme Court of Louisiana Historical Society. The Louisiana Bar Foundation named Baier its Distinguished Professor 2004. The Tiger Athletic Foundation honored Professor Baier with its prestigious TAF Undergraduate Teaching Award for his teaching in the LSU Honors College ("Honors Colleges and Law Schools: A Decennial Digest," 32 Legal Stud. F. 915, 2008). He was voted Law Professor of the Year by the Law Center senior class of 2010.