As most of you are aware, I frequently shake my fist at people, issues, and the world. This may be one of those instances. I have just finished up my law school admissions cycle, and have been exposed to the role race plays in the process. At the very least, it is unsettling, and at the other end (and in my opinion more likely to be true), it is unconstitutional.

There are some basics matters to be covered before further discussion. I am only talking about law school. My experience with undergraduate study is greatly limited, and I have no experience at all with other graduate or professional programs. Law school admissions function mostly on numbers. Your undergraduate GPA and your LSAT score being the two numbers that are given the most consideration. Looking at trends and admissions data, it is generally accepted that your LSAT score is given greater weight than your GPA. The LSAT gives score out of a possible 180, with the average being around 150 or so. Scoring a 160 or above gets you in the 80th or so percentile. Scoring a 170 or above is considered exceptional, and in that range you’re in about the 97th percentile (these numbers are just averages, as they change from exam to exam). To take one elite law school, the University of Chicago’s LSAT range is 169-173, and GPA range is 3.5-3.8 (these are 25th and 75th percentile numbers) . I think that should provide a sufficient understanding of the type of numbers it takes to get into a (top) law school.

Almost any law school website you visit will have a page or at least a line or two about promoting diversity in their student body. Admittedly, law school is a very white place even still. The reasoning most law schools provide is similar to the one given by the University of Wisconsin: We believe that diversity improves legal education. It provides a broadening, more stimulating, and thought-provoking environment for everyone; enhances our students’ ability to see problems from different perspectives; teaches students how to represent clients who are different from them; and prepares students to succeed in the increasingly diverse world in which they will practice. A better education, better racial understanding, and creating a more diverse legal field are all the results of promoting diversity in the student body. It all sounds quite ideal. Now the question arises, what exactly is diversity? How does one achieve it?

This is where things become quite problematic. In order to attain whatever definition they have of diversity, a university attempts to recruit underrepresented minorities (URMs). For law schools, this mainly means blacks, Mexicans, and Native Americans. Please note that there is a difference between Mexicans and other types of Hispanics in the admissions process. Unsurprisingly, there are not as many URM applicants as there are white applicants (South and East Asians are completely left out of the discussion). What this seemingly leads to is admissions offers to students that are much less qualified than their non-URM peers. I’ll provide some examples using data from the website LawSchoolNumbers. An aside on that, it’s the only data we really have since law schools don’t reveal such specifics themselves. So while it is not official information, it is the best available. The data for the University of Chicago shows a nearly perfect example. A URM was admitted with a 164 and 3.6 GPA. These are generally good numbers, but certainly not UChicago numbers. On the flipside, a non-URM applicant was rejected with a 171 and a 3.8 GPA. There are no non-URM applicants that were admitted with numbers near a 164/3.6.

It is clear that Law Schools are willing to make serious concessions for URM applicants in regards to their test scores and GPA in order to create that ambiguous diversity they desire. This seems like an appropriate space to bring up the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution (I am aware UChicago is not a state school):

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The United States Supreme Court has tackled these very issues in some very important cases. The more recent case, Grutter v. Bollinger, relies on the decision made in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In both cases the Court rules that racial quotas are unconstitutional, but that race may be used a plus factor in the consideration of applicants. In Grutter the Court dealt with University of Michigan Law School, which made the argument that diversity was a compelling interest because it leads to a better education. What’s interesting about this case is that those in the majority didn’t seem to really question Michigan’s policies for creating what they referred to as a “critical mass” of URMs necessary to create diversity. In my opinion, that sounds an awful lot like a quota, only phrased slightly differently. Those that dissented expressed similar concerns. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in his dissent: “Stripped of its ‘critical mass’ veil, the Law School’s program is revealed as a naked effort to achieve racial balancing.”

There’s a lot of legalese that could be discussed in regards to the case(s) [I do highly recommend taking the time to read the cases and dissents], but it is that simple. These law schools are attempting to either achieve racial balance, or have some amount of minority students simply to be able to say they are diverse. In doing so, they are unfairly discriminating against those with the good numbers but are not URMs. The claim that diversity creates a better education is suspect, as the studies provided show perhaps a marginal benefit. I would argue that being surrounded by students who are intelligent is more important in creating a better learning environment. Taking in students with low numbers simply because of their race hurts the university, and hurts the profession. Instead, we should be encouraging better education up to the point of applying to law school for minority students so that they are able to compete with everyone else fairly, and do not have to rely on a policy that is only slowing down the process of making race irrelevant.


Some References
http://www.top-law-schools.com/rankings.html
http://www.law.wisc.edu/prospective/diversitymain.html
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-241.ZS.html
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-241.ZX1.html