DATE: Monday, March 10, 1997                TAG: 9703100039

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  108 lines

CONSERVATIVE GROUP OF LEGAL EAGLES SPREADING ITS WINGS THE AMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW AND JUSTICE IS ADDING CHAPTERS AND STAFF NATIONWIDE.

Just off the plane from his home in Atlanta, Jay Sekulow hustles into his unlived-in CBN office. He'll squeeze in an interview, some meetings and a bagel before taking another flight to Washington, D.C.

Sekulow, 40, is the director of the American Center for Law and Justice and personifies the organization in many ways - ambitious and combative, bringing persuasive logic to the faith of Christian conservatives.

Like Sekulow, too, the ACLJ is on the move.

In January, a New York state chapter opened in Manhattan. Another opened in February in Dallas. May will see an ACLJ chapter in California, maybe even San Francisco.

Six years after its launch, the ACLJ is testing its muscles and reaching out to see what it can do. The staff has doubled, up to 24 lawyers now, with plans for 30 by year's end.

``We're past startup, we're in a new chapter, maybe a new book,'' said Sekulow. ``We know our strengths now.''

Sekulow is celebrating a recent Supreme Court decision which struck down ``floating bubble zones'' that kept anti-abortion protesters from approaching patients at a Buffalo, N.Y., clinic. The Rev. Paul Schenck, the protester in question, now works for the ACLJ.

``This is one of the most difficult cases I've had to argue, without a doubt,'' Sekulow said. ``It was a tense situation. Here there have been these two abortion clinics bombed recently and I'm arguing that floating bubble zones violate a free-speech right.

``It was not great timing.''

The Schenck case illustrates what Sekulow calls his strengths - and the organization's - and critics call his weaknesses.

Sekulow said his argument before the Supreme Court was specific and focused on the floating bubble zone, not the ``fixed zones'' that are used across the country. ``If I had gotten up there and argued on the fixed zones, I'd have lost it all,'' he said.

Schenck was an example of a carefully selected, appropriately argued case, he said.

Not so fast, said Elliot Mincberg, general counsel for People for the American Way, a group that tends to oppose the ACLJ's aims.

``Portraying Schenck as a victory for them is overstating it, to put it mildly,'' said Mincberg, who has taken part in debates at Regent University. ``They're a little quick to put a spin on the results.

``I was there, I heard Jay in the argument and it didn't sound that way to me. He was arguing the whole thing, fixed zones and all. He didn't get that.

``And he didn't get as much as he would like on the floating bubble zone, either. The court said it wasn't ruling that out in any case, only in the facts of this case.''

Still, Mincberg willingly acknowledges the ACLJ's overall effectiveness.

``There's no question the ACLJ is one of the most prominent religious right legal organizations in the country,'' he said. ``They have been very active and clever in their case selection to push forward their agenda.

``One thing they have done that has been useful up to a point, not as much as they'd like, is to argue the free speech clause, that religious people have a right to free speech.''

Sekulow considers case selection an essential part of that strategy. At the offices on the Regent University grounds, and through an 800 number broadcast on his weekly radio show, the ACLJ takes thousands of calls from people who feel they have cases, he said.

He or someone in his office chooses all the cases they will take on.

Unlike the American Civil Liberties Union, which allows its individual chapters to operate more independently, Sekulow keeps those kinds of decisions close to the top.

``I think we're a little bit more monolithic than they are,'' Sekulow said. ``We're not going to allow as much autonomy in our chapter offices.''

The expansion into chapters nationwide will be a challenge for ACLJ, in terms of resources and direction. The budget has grown to $12 million, and they now do their own fund raising, independently of Regent and the Christian Broadcasting Network.

But charitable donations have slipped for all groups in recent years. Sekulow also has to find enough of the right kinds of lawyers to staff those new offices. He is working with Regent to train its law graduates for the work; 15 are being trained now.

``We have to make sure our growth coincides with our resources,'' Sekulow said. ``It's hard to open up 50 state chapters when you don't have 50 lawyers trained. We're not trying to go from A to Z overnight. I want to go from A to B to C and so on.''

Nonetheless, ACLJ's goals are ambitious: Sekulow wants to be the leading conservative legal group on a range of issues, from the standbys of abortion and school prayer to emerging hot buttons like same-sex marriage and the right to die.

Sekulow believes Americans, and thus hopefully the courts, are receptive to ACLJ's principles.

``I think the tone of the country right now is concerned,'' he said. ``People are concerned about the decline in moral values, concerned that we're not going in the right direction.''

Why, then, was President Bill Clinton re-elected?

``Maybe he better articulated his concerns about moral values,'' Sekulow said.

Mincberg is not persuaded.

``I think the courts are in general these days striking a pretty middle-of-the-road position in a whole range of issues,'' he said. ``I don't see courts radically changing the law in the ways Jay would like.''

Either way, Sekulow said his opponents can expect to see him in the courtroom for a long time.

``I think I'm doing this the rest of my life,'' he said. ``I love it. I'm good at it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

Jay Sekulow, director of the ACLJ: ``People are concerned about the

decline in moral values.'' KEYWORDS: AMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW AND JUSTICE PROFILE

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu