The US Civil Rights Commission has issued a major and highly critical report on affirmative action in law schools:
This Commission finds that "admitting students into law schools for which they might not academically be prepared could harm their academic performance and hinder their ability to obtain secure and gainful employment..." Moreover, the Commission finds that racial preferences might also contribute to racial income and wealth disparities. The Commission expresses particular concern about the lack of transparency in law school admissions, urging legislation to require federally-funded law schools to publicly disclose their use of racial preferences.
In making these findings, the Commission noted the work of my colleague Rick Sander, who has written extensively on the issue.
Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds commented, "Race-based admissions have been found to harm minority law students by setting them up for failure. Law schools that continue to use racial preferences despite this evidence should at least disclose the risks of academic mismatch to minority student applicants." Continuing, Chairman Reynolds said, "A true civil rights strategy would focus on these students much earlier in their educational development, rather than providing them with inadequate training and then using preferential treatment to admit them into schools at which they are likely to fail."
That's essentially what Rick's been arguing.
The Commission also found that the ABA is effectively pressuring law schools into using preferences in admissions:
The Commission admonished that the American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions of the Bar has adopted a diversity standard that tacitly prods law schools to use racial preferences in student admissions. The Commission criticizes the ABA standard because it "substitutes the judgment of the Council for that of the law schools in deciding whether diversity is essential to their educational mission."
The full text of the report is here.
