Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Affirmative Action in Law School
One of the most controversial recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding affirmative action was Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which ruled that the affirmative action policy of the University of Michigan Law School was constitutional, given that it was not a quota system, but merely took race into consideration when making decisions about student admission. Yet according to Amir Efrati, in a provocatively-titled 2007 editorial for the online Wall Street Journal, "Is affirmative action at law school actually hurting minorities:" "minority students who gain special admission to better-regarded law schools based on their race end up in academic settings for which they aren't qualified, leading to lower grades and bar passage rates than if they had been admitted to a school that doesn't use racial preferences" (Efrati 2007).
Efrati cites a study conduced by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that "found that black and white law students granted admission to a school based on similar credentials earned roughly the same grades and passed the bar at a similar rate. But black law students given preferential treatment over white students -- that is, admitted to a school despite lesser qualifications than their white counterparts -- had poorer grades and bar-exam results, and higher attrition rates, than whites who attended the same school" (Efrati 2007).
Efrati implies that affirmative action does more harm than good to minorities as well as whites: but one online commentator pointed out that students going to the top law schools with high LSATs and grades usually have enough money to have substantial test preparation, time to do unfunded internships before law school, and are less apt to have to work to support their studies while in law school. Individuals admitted through affirmative action programs might have fewer opportunities of that nature, and thus be more in need of support to make the transition between undergraduate and law school, and to deal with the class-based as well as racial barriers that might inhibit the students' full acceptance into the law school environment. The study should be read as an indication of the need for greater support of minority law students, not evidence that affirmative action does not work.
Reference
Efrati, Amir. (2007, August 29). Is affirmative action at law school actually hurting minorities?
Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 29, 2010.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/08/29/is-affirmative-action-at-law-school-actually-hurting-minorities/tab/article/
Saving Affirmative Action Laws Affirmative action laws apply to many sections of societal interactions be it school admissions, business, or employee hiring, they attempt to balance the history of racial discrimination that marked the period before the laws came into being. Affirmative action requires that persons making decisions relating to employment, business and education take into account factors such as religion, sex, color, race and national origin. The major advantage of
Changing Affirmative Action Laws The Need to Change Affirmative Action Laws The affirmative action laws have been around since the 1960s, but now there is a need to change them due to the changes that have been seen in society. The laws were designed for a very specific time in history, and at that time they were what was needed in order to make sure people who had been discriminated against were
..aims to compensate people for past discrimination and its effects. A main effect of past discrimination is current competitive disadvantage; affirmative action gives victims a competitive advantage to compensate for this injury." (1998) the Discrimination-blocking affirmative action according to Anderson: "...aims to block current discriminatory mechanisms by imposing a countervailing force in the opposite direction. It doesn't remove the factors -- prejudice, stereotypes, stigma, intergroup anxiety -- that cause discrimination;
Affirmative Action has been an issue of great debate and controversy since its establishment. Because of the very fact that such legislation was deemed needed is indicative of the mass inequality existing in a country that was formed on the basis of the individual liberties and justice. Affirmative Action is a legal and social response to help eliminate the historical and social inequities of minorities and women and America. The
One of the arguments that all the writers make is that despite the issue of merit, some employers are inherently racist. This may be true in that people always have an internal bias in them, about different things. But what becomes the best corrector against race-based hiring is that not having the best employees for a job will cut into profit margins and cause employers to gladly hire African-Americans if
Affirmative Action Plan It is a fact that there has been discrimination in employment, where minorities, women, veterans and the disabled are sidelined in favor of the rest of the population. This ought to be provided with equitable access to employment opportunities and this is exactly what affirmative action plan does. By statistical analyses of the demographics, affirmative action programs are able to do away with the negative effects of employment