Law Commons^™

The Promise Of Grutter: Diverse Interactions At The University Of Michigan Law School, Meera E. Deo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School on the grounds of educational diversity. Yet the Court's assumption that admitting diverse students into law school would result in improved race relations, livelier classroom conversations, and better professional outcomes for students has never been empirically tested. This Article relies on survey and focus group data collected at the University of Michigan Lav School campus itself in March 2010 to examine not only whether, but how diversity affects learning. The data indicate both that there are sufficient numbers of students of color …

Without Color Of Law: The Losing Race Against Colorblindness In Michigan, Khaled Ali Beydoun

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Essay examines affirmative action, while discussing its fall in California, Washington State, and ultimately Michigan.

Negative Action Versus Affirmative Action: Asian Pacific Americans Are Still Caught In The Crossfire, William C. Kidder

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The author concludes that Espenshade and Chung's inattention to the distinction between negative action and affirmative action effectively marginalizes APAs and contributes to a skewed and divisive public discourse about affirmative action, one in which APAs are falsely portrayed as conspicuous adversaries of diversity in higher education. The author will also argue that there is ample reason to be concerned about the harmful effects of divisive and empirically unsupported claims about APAs influencing the public debate over affirmative action, particularly in Michigan, where an anti-affirmative action initiative nearly identical to California's Proposition 209 will appear on the November 2006 ballot. …

Dealing With Hate In The Feminist Classroom: Re-Thinking The Balance, Kathryn M. Stanchi

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

The goals of this essay are two-fold. First, by describing the experience the author had in Law and Feminism, the essay will show how hateful and harassing speech in a seminar devoted to issues of gender, race and sexuality can rob students of important educational experiences. The story of the author’s class is meant to remind legal educators and administrators of the concrete harm, both personal and educational, of hate speech. Too often the hate speech debate focuses on the theoretical and the abstract; participants forget that the principles at stake have demonstrable consequences for real people. Second, while this …

A General Theory Of Cultural Diversity, Steven A. Ramirez

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article seeks to extend the analysis of these developments in the corporate world to anti-discrimination law under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This Article will show that discrimination based upon cultural insights or experiences is distinct from race discrimination and will articulate a general theory of why and under what circumstances this holds true. The difference between culture-based discrimination and using culture as a proxy for race (Which would then be race discrimination) requires a careful and non-mythological understanding of what race is, and what race is not. Moreover, showing that culture discrimination is not prohibited …

The Compelling Need For Diversity In Higher Education, Michigan Journal Of Race & Law

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The University of Michigan has brought together a team of leading scholars to serve as its experts in these cases to establish the basis for the University's argument that there is a compelling need for diversity in higher education. Their research is evidence that the use of race in higher education admissions is not only constitutional, but of vital importance to education and to our society.

Expert Report Of Thomas J. Sugrue, Thomas J. Sugrue

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the end of the twentieth century, the United States is a remarkably diverse society. It grows more diverse by the day, transformed by an enormous influx of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. In an increasingly global economy, Americans are coming into contact with others of different cultures to an extent seen only in times of world war. Yet amidst this diversity remains great division. When the young black academic W.E.B. DuBois looked out onto America in 1903, he memorably proclaimed that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Over …

Expert Report Of Eric Foner, Eric Foner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Race has been a crucial line of division in American society since the settlement of the American colonies in the beginning of the 17th century. It remains so today. While the American understanding of the concept of "race" has changed over time, the history of African-Americans provides a useful template for understanding the history of race relations. The black experience has affected how other racial minorities have been treated in our history, and illuminates the ways in which America's white majority has viewed racial difference.

Expert Report Of Patricia Gurin, Patricia Gurin

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A racially and ethnically diverse university student body has far-ranging and significant benefits for all students, non-minorities and minorities alike. Students learn better in a diverse educational environment, and they are better prepared to become active participants in our pluralistic, democratic society once they leave such a setting. In fact, patterns of racial segregation and separation historically rooted in our national life can be broken by diversity experiences in higher education. This Report describes the strong evidence supporting these conclusions derived from three parallel empirical analyses of university students, as well as from existing social science theory and research.

Expert Report Of Claude M. Steele, Claude M. Steele

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Report based on 25-year period of research in the areas of social psychology, the social psychology of race and race relations, and the effects of race on standardized test performance.

Expert Report Of Robert B. Webster, Robert B. Webster

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The author’s opinions are based primarily upon knowledge and insight gained in the forty years in which he has been a practicing attorney, counselor, arbitrator, mediator, bar officer, and state court judge. Webster’s opinions are also based in part upon materials described in Section IV.B, within.

Expert Report Of Kinley Larntz, Ph.D., Kinley Larntz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

While working in this matter, the author undertook the task of analyzing the statistical relationship between law school acceptance and ethnicity. In particular, focusing on the strength of the relationship between law school acceptance and being a member of certain ethnic groups, controlling for qualifications for admission such as undergraduate grade point average, Law School Admission Test score, and selection index, and for other factors such as residency in the State of Michigan, gender, and a measure of economic disadvantage, waiver of the fee for application.

Introduction, Michigan Journal Of Race & Law

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The last Supreme Court decision addressing the use of race in admissions to institutions of higher education, Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, affirmed that the role of diversity in colleges and universities is both essential and compelling. Since Bakke, opponents and proponents have wrestled with ideology and theory, but have never had the benefit of a comprehensive theoretical framework that has been tested by reliable empirical data. The University of Michigan has drawn on several of the nation's leading, and most respected, researchers and scholars, to develop such a framework and verify its legitimacy with …

Expert Report Of Albert M. Camarillo, Albert M. Camarillo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the request of attorneys with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, the author has prepared this report which outlines the historical patterns and legacies of racial isolation and separation of Hispanics in American society. The research is based on archival collections, syntheses of secondary literature, and other primary sources such as U.S. government reports including Bureau of the Census population reports. Based on the author’s knowledge and research, this report outlines the historical developments that resulted in patterns of racial exclusion and isolation of Hispanics in the states and cities where they have settled since 1900. In particular, this report will …

Expert Report Of William G. Bowen, William G. Bowen

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Higher education plays a unique role in our society. The obligation of a university is to the society at large over the long run, and, even more generally, to the pursuit of learning. Although this may seem amorphous, there is no escaping a university's obligation to try to serve the long-term interests of society defined in the broadest and least parochial terms, and to do so through two principal activities: advancing knowledge and educating students who will in turn serve others, within this nation and beyond it, both through their specific vocations and as citizens. Universities therefore are responsible for …

Expert Report Of Kent D. Syverud, Kent D. Syverud

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Expert report from an educator with experience teaching many students in many settings; particular experience teaching the same subject matter to classes that are racially homogenous and racially heterogeneous, and to classes where non-white students make up a tiny fraction of the enrolled students and where their numbers are more significant.

Toil Of The Firestarters, Peter A. Alces

Michigan Law Review

A Review of In the Company of Scholars: The Struggle for the Soul of Higher Education by Julius Getman

The University Of Michigan: Its Legal Profile, William B. Cudlip

Michigan Legal Studies Series

Inspiration for the preparation of this volume came from reading two sections of Volume I of the four-volumes published in 1942 entitled, The University of Michigan-An Encyclopedic Survey. One section by E. Blythe Stason, Dean Emeritus of the University's Law School, is captioned "The Constitutional Status of the University of Michigan." The other section captioned "The Organization, Powers and Personnel of the Board of Regents" was prepared by the Dean and the late Wilfred B. Shaw, long connected with the University in important administrative capacities and intimately acquainted with its history.

The material here presented duplicates in part that …

Law As A Culture Study, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

That acute observer and commentator on American institutions, James Bryce, in an oft-quoted statement in his American Commonwealth, pays a high tribute to the efficiency of American law schools. "I do not know if there is anything," he writes, "in which America has advanced more beyond the mother country than in the provision she makes for legal education." In passing this generous judgment, in which many other eminent Englishmen have concurred, he views our law schools simply as institutions for developing technical proficiency among students destined to fill the ranks of the legal profession. And this is, indeed, the principal …