Recent decisions made at the highest levels of American legal education, and cases on which the U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule, are adding fuel to a debate that has always been at least on a simmer.
Indeed, the decisions made by law schools and the cases in the Supreme Court, both centered on practices and policies to increase racial diversity, are closely tied to public sentiment and societal awareness.
A seismic change in the admissions process has occurred over the past few years. As reported by The Epoch Times, many U.S. law schools—including some of the most prestigious and competitive—are electing to do away with the mandate that applicants submit their Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores, long a standard requirement.
Law schools, though, still require applicants to take a standardized test, whether it is the LSAT or the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE). A few schools also accept the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).
Changes to the application process are being made in the interest and pursuit of increasing and broadening racial diversity in student enrollment.
Notwithstanding the significance of scrapping the LSAT mandate, of even greater impact was the vote last month of a panel of the American Bar Association (ABA). The organization that accredits U.S. law schools, beginning in 2015, will permit its member schools to waive not just the LSAT requirement, but also to make any standardized test optional.
A Merging of Issues
Coming together in the public square are the decisions of law schools and the ABA, and two cases in front of the Supreme Court that portend the dismantling of legal precedent established 44 years ago that permits academic institutions to consider race when deciding on who will be admitted.On Oct. 31, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the cases Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina. Students for Fair Admissions is the plaintiff in both cases.
Also in both cases, the petitioners allege that the universities “have employed and are employing racially and ethnically discriminatory policies and procedures in administering the undergraduate admissions program.”
It is widely predicted that the 6-3 conservative majority of the Supreme Court will, in June 2023, render a decision that favors the plaintiffs.
Growth of a Movement
If the U.S. Supreme Court rules it is unconstitutional for race to be considered in admissions decisions, it will undo its 1978 landmark ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke—which it upheld in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger—that institutions of higher education cannot use racial quotas and exclusive racial criteria in admissions, but can use consideration of race in a tailored and limited fashion in the interest of bringing about more diversity.The Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger decisions held affirmative action as constitutional.
Removing the LSAT mandate is a relatively new phenomenon, with the University of Arizona Law School in 2016 becoming the first to allow applicants to submit either LSAT or GRE scores to satisfy an admissions requirement.
When, the following year, Harvard University Law School stopped requiring LSAT scores, the future of the LSAT, and its place in the admissions process, launched high-level public debate across society in general.
Diversity by Other Means
Aaron Taylor, a legal scholar, and advocate for diversity works at the nexus of change in law school admissions, testing, and affirmative action.Taylor is the executive director of the AccessLex Center for Legal Education Excellence at AccessLex Institute, a nonprofit organization that runs programs and provides services that broaden the availability and affordability of a law degree. He has been on staff since 2017.
Among the AccessLex programs is Lex Scholars, a “diversity pipeline initiative aimed at learning more about effective methods for increasing law school diversity." Lex Scholars supports and assists more than 1,200 aspiring lawyers.
The “effective methods” that AccessLex incorporates include those that do not push for strict consideration of race in law school applications, and can operate independently of conventional affirmative action practices.
“We are trying to make law school admissions a more holistic process, one in which more factors are considered than today,” Taylor told The Epoch Times. “The LSAT surely has its place and has value in evaluating candidates and making decisions on admissions, but it has long weighed too heavily in the admissions process, and it unfairly discriminates against people of color.”
A former professor at the St. Louis University School of Law, and graduate of Howard University School of Law, Taylor cited a study he co-authored with his AccessLex Institute colleagues. The study of almost 5,000 law school graduates documented that a “one-point increase in an LSAT score was associated with only a 00.3-point increase in a first-year law school GPA.”
Taylor and AccessLex anticipate an America in which it is illegal for universities and colleges to take race into account when making admissions decisions.
Taylor has been thinking about this issue for a while. His comment, published in the fall of 2018 in an Above The Law article, “Law Schools Need to Prepare for a World Without Affirmative Action, ” is particularly prescient and leads the discussion.
“Our first effort is to set the stage because looming ahead sometime in the next five years is that affirmative action may be coming to an end. So we are trying to emphasize evidence-based and practical information to law schools to help them find what works to diversify.”
