Law and Race Commons^™

Race Belongs In Week One Of Lrw, Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

I talk to my 1Ls about race and the law in their first week of law school. In doing so, I have discovered that discussing race helps me introduce foundational concepts about legal writing and law school that we will return to throughout the year. That is partly because race is relevant to nearly every topic law school touches on. But it is also because race is present in—and often conspicuous in its absence from—court opinions in ways that provide rich fodder for discussing how to approach law school. That topic interests all students—even those who might be skeptical about …

The Changing Student Body At The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

Most of the content of the memo that follows has been previously published in the article "Who We Were and Who We Are: How Michigan Law Students Have Changed Since the 1950s: Findings from 40 Years of Alumni Surveys." T. K. Adams, co-author. Law Quad. Notes 51, no. 1 (2009): 74-80, available through this website. This memo provides more detail about changing entry credentials and about the great expansion beginning in the 1970s in the numbers of women students and of racial/ethnic minority students. It also provides information not in the article about the patterns over time in students’ …

Starting Out: Changing Patterns Of First Jobs For Michigan Law School Graduates, Terry K. Adams, David L. Chambers

Articles

In the early 1950s, the typical graduate of Michigan Law began his career working as an associate in a law firm with four other lawyers and earned about $5,000 in his first year. Surprising to us today, in his new job he would have earned slightly less than other classmates whose first jobs were in government. Fifty years later, in the early 2000s, the typical graduate still started out as an associate in a law firm, but the firm she worked for had more than 400 lawyers. She earned about $114,000 in her first year, about three times as much …

Who We Were And Who We Are: How Michigan Law Students Have Changed Since The 1950s: Findings From 40 Years Of Alumni Surveys, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

Articles

For 40 consecutive years, from 1967 to 2006, the Law School surveyed its alumni regarding their lives and careers. The project began in 1967 with the mailing of a questionnaire to the class of 1952 shortly before their 15th reunion. The results proved interesting enough that surveys were sent each year thereafter to the class 15 years out. In 1973, the classes 5 years out were added to the survey.

The Real Impact Of Eliminating Affirmative Action In American Law Schools: An Empirical Critique Of Richard Sander's Study, David L. Chambers, Timothy T. Clydesdale, William C. Kidder, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

In 1970, there were about 4000 African American lawyers in the United States. Today there are more than 40,000. The great majority of the 40,000 have attended schools that were once nearly all-white, and most were the beneficiaries of affirmative action in their admission to law school. American law schools and the American bar can justly take pride in the achievements of affirmative action: the training of tens of thousands of African American (as well as Latino, Asian American, and Native American) practitioners, community leaders, judges, and law professors; the integration of the American bar; the services that minority attorneys …

Brief For Respondents, Grutter V. Bollinger, 539 Us 306 (2003) (No. 02-241)., Maureen E. Mahoney, Evan Caminker, Marvin Krislov, Jonathan Alger, Philip J. Kessler, Leonard M. Niehoff, J. Scott Ballenger, Nathaniel A. Vitan, John H. Pickering, John Payton, Brigida Benitez, Stuart Delery, Craig Goldblatt, Anne Harkavy, Terry A. Maroney

Appellate Briefs

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

1. Whether this Court should reaffirm its decision in Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) and hold that the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body to an institution of higher education, its students, and the public it serves, are sufficiently compelling to permit the school to consider race and/or ethnicity as one of many factors in making admissions decisions through a "properly devised" admissions program.

2. Whether the Court of Appeals correctly held that the University of Michigan Law School's admissions program is properly devised.

Constitutional Sunsetting?: Justice O'Connor's Closing Comments On Grutter, Vikram David Amar, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

Most Supreme Court watchers were unsurprised that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's vote proved pivotal in resolving the University of Michigan affirmative action cases; indeed, Justice O'Connor has been in the majority in almost every case involving race over the past decade, and was in the majority in each and every one of the 5-4 decisions the Court handed down across a broad range of difficult issues last Term. Some smaller number of observers were unsurprised that Justice O'Connor decided (along with the four Justices who in the past have voted to allow latitude with regard to race-based affirmative action programs) …

Myths And Facts About Affirmative Action, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

Articles

The case against affirmative action in admissions to institutions of higher education is based on the moral attractiveness of colorblind decision making and buttressed by a sense that such programs are not just unfair but pointless. Their intended beneficiaries, the argument goes, are put in situations in which they are unable to compete with whites and not only perform poorly but are destructively demoralized in the process. Common to arguments against affirmative action in admissions is a belief that minorities advantaged by it displace whites who are more deserving of admission because they have accomplished more, can better benefit from …

Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: Answers To Methodological Queries, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

Articles

Before making a few remarks in response to those who commented on our article (Lempert, Chambers, and Adams 2000), we would like to express our gratitude to the editors of Law and Social Inquiry for securing these commentaries and to the people who wrote them. The comments both highlight the potential uses to which our research and similar studies may be put and give us the opportunity to address methodological concerns and questions that other readers of our article may share with those who commented on it. The responses to our work are of two types. Professors Nelson, Payne, and …

Michigan's Minority Graduates In Practice: The River Runs Through Law School, Richard O. Lempert, David L. Chambers, Terry K. Adams

Articles

This paper reports the results of a 1997-98 survey designed to explore the careers of the University of Michigan Law School's minority graduates from the classes of 1970 through 1996, and of a random sample of Michigan Law School's white alumni who graduated during the same years. It is to date the most detailed quantitative exploration of how minority students fare after they graduate from law school and enter law practice or related careers. The results reveal that almost all of Michigan Law School's minority graduates pass a bar exam and go on to have careers that appear successful by …

Doing Well And Doing Good: The Careers Of Minority And White Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers, Richard O. Lempert, Terry K. Adams

Articles

Of the more than 1,000 law students attending the University of Michigan Law School in the spring of 1965, only one was African American. The Law School faculty, in response, decided to develop a program to attract more African American students. One element of this program was the authorization of a deliberately race-conscious admissiosn process. By the mid-1970s, at least 25 African American students were represented in each graduating class. By the late 1970s, Latino and Native American students were included in the program as well. Over the nearly three decades between 1970 and 1998, the admissions efforts and goals …

The African American, Latino, And Native American Graduates Of One American Law School, 1970-1996, David L. Chambers, Richard O. Lempert, Terry K. Adams

Articles

In the spring of 1965, only one African American student and no Latino students attended the University of Michigan Law School. At the time, Michigan, like most American law schools, was a training place for white males. In 1966, the law school faculty adopted a new admissions policy that took race into account as a plus factor in the admissions process. This policy of affirmative action has taken many forms over the years, but, across the decades of the 1970's, the 1980's and the 1990's, about 800 African Americans, 350 Latinos, 200 Asian Americans and 100 Native Americans have graduated …

Gender And Race Bias Against Lawyers: A Classroom Response, Suellyn Scarnecchia

Articles

In reviewing other clinicians' approaches to teaching about bias, I identified problems that eventually led me to design a two-hour class session on bias against lawyers. The following is a review of a few other teaching methods and a description of my own approach, detailing its own strengths and weaknesses. This is not an exhaustive review of all possible approaches to bias. It is offered to promote classroom discussion of bias against lawyers and to invite the development of innovative alternatives to my approach.

Salt Survey: Minority Group Persons In Law School Teaching, David L. Chambers

Articles

In the summer and fall of 1981 we sent questionnaires to faculty members1 at all 172 law schools accredited by the AALS, asking questions about current numbers of minority group members and women on their faculties and about numbers of offers made and offers accepted, tenure decisions and denials, and resignations. Our principal goal was to measure the progress that has been achieved in adding minorities and women to law faculties. In this issue, we report on our findings about minority groups.

Minority Preferences In Law School Admissions, Terrance Sandalow

Book Chapters

In addressing the subject of "reverse discrimination," I want to caution at the outset against permitting the use of the word "discrimination" to prejudice consideration of the subject. "Discrimination" has, in recent years, become a bad word. It tends to be used as a shorthand for "unjustifiably unequal treatment." In its original and still proper meaning, however, the word is quite neutral. Discrimination merely means differentiation. It comes from a Latin word that means "to distinguish." Accordingly, when we discriminate-i.e., when we differentiate or distinguish-among people, the propriety of our action depends upon the reasons that we have acted as …