Abstract
In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited colleges and universities from using race as a factor in admissions decisions. Many have feared that this ruling portends the end of racial diversity in higher education. Law schools, however, can choose to treat this decision as creating a fresh opportunity to pursue racial justice in a comprehensive and meaningful way. Most of the early scholarly writing on Students for Fair Admissions focused on either its shortcomings or the narrow issue of academic admissions policies. These initial analyses did not examine two critical facts. First, prior to the Court’s decision, most law school practices were far from ideal and frequently reinforced structural racism. Second, law schools can use Students for Fair Admissions as an impetus for making changes to those harmful practices.
This Article demonstrates how law schools can take full advantage of that opportunity. First, it explains how the Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions preserves law schools’ ability to pursue racial justice, especially with schools no longer needing to restrict their actions to meet the Court’s previous constrained diversity model. Next, this Article details the need for changing the ways in which most law schools currently contribute to the legal profession’s status as America’s “whitest profession.” Finally, it provides a wide range of actions, in areas including student recruitment, admissions policies, law school culture, faculty hiring, bar exams, U.S. News rankings, and law firm practices, that law schools can undertake to advance racial justice in a post–Students for Fair Admissions world.
Recommended Citation
Michael I. Meyerson,
When One Door Closes: Legal Education and Racial Justice after Students for Fair Admissions,
103 Neb. L. Rev. 325
(2024)
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nlr/vol103/iss3/2
