Civil Rights Panel: Law School Affirmative Action May Hurt Blacks
By David Pluviose
Is American Bar Association-mandated affirmative action among U.S. law schools ultimately helping or hurting prospective Black attorneys?
At a hearing last month in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights openly challenged the ABA’s affirmative action policy. Prior to the hearing, commission members sent letters to the U.S. Department of Education requesting that the ABA’s accrediting authority be revoked unless it drops its affirmative action requirement.
The Republican-controlled USCCR is up in arms over a revised ABA provision that calls for law schools to demonstrate “concrete action” toward promoting diversity among students, faculty and staff. The proposed changes will go to the ABA House of Delegates for approval next month.
“We believe all students benefit from exposure to diverse viewpoints and experiences, and racial and ethnic differences often provide the basis for differences in perspective,” said Steven R. Smith, chairman of the ABA’s accreditation and bar admissions council.
But affirmative action in U.S. law schools is damaging to Blacks on many levels, countered Dr. Richard H. Sander, a law school professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He noted that half of all Blacks who enter law school end up in the bottom 10 percent of their class after their first year, and Blacks fail to graduate at two and a half times the rate of Whites. Additionally, Blacks fail the bar in their first attempt at more than four times the rate of Whites, and Blacks fail to pass the bar after multiple attempts at more than six times the rate of Whites.
