Reply to Law School

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Law School"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Exlawdean][quote=Anonymous][quote=Exlawdean]In the aftermath of the Students for Fair Admissions decision, I thought it might help if I made some comments that put it into context.

First, although the opinion is literally about undergraduate admissions (at Harvard and at UNC) I don't know anyone who thinks this decision does not apply to law school admissions programs.

Second, this decision has been anticipated, at a general level, by most law school admissions offices, ever since the Supreme Court agreed to take the case.

Third, at the very end of his opinion, Justice Roberts laid out what the majority wants. Race can be taken into account at an individual level, if it directly connects to character traits and abilities in the individual that the school values. It is worth quoting this short section:

[i]"nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. . . . A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university.  In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race."[/i]

Fourth, the majority claimed to be irked by the inability to measure the benefits from diversity, the central rationale for the predominant system that the majority struck down. No one that I have talked to will hazard a guess whether the new, retail approach to considering race that Roberts' opinion describes in the quoted language above, will need to produce [i]measurable[/i] benefits in order to survive.

Fifth, I have heard suggestions that admissions offices can just move to using wholesale proxies for race -- think of preferring people from certain zip codes -- and avoid the thrust of the majority opinion. I think that is wrong. Such a wholesale approach will likely fall quickly if challenged in court. The quoted language, and other language from section VI of the majority opinion, rejects such an attempted work-around, IMO.

Sixth, re-configuring the admissions process to conform to Roberts' opinion can be done, but it will be expensive. Producing the tailoring that Roberts demands will likely mean hiring additional admissions officers. There are other possible responses, but I won't go into them here.

That's all, for now. Have a great 4th.

[/quote]

Thank you for starting and participating in this thread.

I do not understand your sixth point in light of your third point. Why would any admissions process need to be reconfigured ? Why would additional AOs need to be hired to conform to Chief Justice Roberts opinion ?  In my view, this is a very simple and inexpensive transition--eliminate race boxes from the admissions application and read the applicants' personal statement essays.[/quote]

[i]Very good question. I believe that the major application advisors (think Spivey) will change the way that they are advising applicants to craft their applications. From this point forward the applications will be crafted to show that the applicant has had to overcome challenges in some way that demonstrates an ability or character trait that will be (should be?) of value to the school. This will not be the advice only to diverse candidates. White candidates -- particularly those with less than stellar LSAT and UGPA -- will be urged to write this as well. And, maybe some others, as well. Each one of those statements must be read with care. And, anticipating litigation and discovery (because the majority made it easy for plaintiffs to get standing in such cases), the admissions officer must write an evaluation of the candidate on the same dimensions. The evaluation must be at least several sentences, explaining the degree to which they find the candidate's experiences, and the connection to valuable skills and character traits, believable and appealing. I would not merely rely on a check box. Further, I would not want a canned paragraph. We would need to be showing [i]individualized attention[/i] to comply. I think this will be on top of the other work that the admissions officers have to do. Until the volume of applications starts to shrink (see my previous post on demographics) we will need an extra admissions officer or two to do the work.[/i][/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics