The deans also claim that racial preferences benefit the entire student body: “No one who has graduated from a law school can seriously doubt that the hours of peer debate among students and within study groups contribute at least as much to students’ education as does time in class.”
Baloney.
“Debate,” to the extent it exists in these near-homogeneously progressive institutions, is much more likely to be between 10 white liberals and one white conservative. Study groups may benefit 1Ls striving to adapt and make friends, but after their first year, students more often forego them for time spent in clinics, externships, and jobs.
In fact, those “trench” environments, away from doctrine, theory, and administration-imposed conformity, is where the real learning takes place. There students are much likelier to be exposed to situations beyond their cultural comfort zones and gain the knowledge and experience that will benefit them as lawyers.
The time to end racial preferences in law school admissions has arrived. Besides being unconstitutional, affirmative action is a policy failure. Elite law school deans who defend the current system are a case study in the promotion of governmental discrimination and unfairness.
Paul H. Jossey is a lawyer living in Alexandria, Virginia. His interests include environmental policy and First Amendment issues.
