The American Bar Association
The American Bar Association (ABA) has taken upon itself the task of providing accreditation to law schools across the country. In most states a law school graduate cannot take the bar exam without having attended an ABA-approved school (aka having achieved accreditation). But the ABA has made things interesting by instilling “diversity” requirements in the accreditation process. Standard 211 requires law schools to take “concrete action to demonstrate a commitment to having a diverse student body.”
For anyone familiar with the diversity-crazed atmosphere at most institutions of higher education, this might not come as much of a surprise. But the requirements border on unlawful in light of the Supreme Court decision on racial preferences established in Grutter v. Bollinger. Prof. David Bernstein dissects these glaring inconsistencies here.
A U.S. Civil Rights Commission took a closer look at what was going on and the ABA, perhaps realizing its policies don’t exactly line up with the law, claimed no law schools had ever been denied accreditation for failing to meet the “diversity” requirements. But Prof. Bernstein reports today that the ABA can longer use this as a defense.
The ABA has denied Charleston Law School provisional accreditation, in part because the ABA is not yet satisfied with its commitment to “diversity.” The law school, its future on the line, will now do the only sensible thing under the circumstances, and admit wildly underqualified minority applicants who will go on to fail the bar exam in wildly disproportionate numbers. But there is a saving grace: thanks to the ABA, which condemned the law school for relying too heavily on electronic resources, while they are in law school they will be able to read cases in the official reports, rather than rely on identical PDF files from Westlaw. Makes me proud to be a member of the ABA.
