Negative action: backfiring racial preferences.

• Author: Sanchez, Julian
• Position: Citings - Brief Article

COULD THE elimination of affirmative action policies in American law schools result in more black lawyers being admitted to the bar--perhaps as many as 8.8 percent more? That's the counterintuitive conclusion of a new study by UCLA law professor Richard H. Sander.

The central argument is one that critics of affirmative action have long made: Students admitted to a school under looser standards are, almost by definition, less likely to be prepared to succeed once admitted, undermining whatever benefit the preference was meant to confer. Sander set out to test that notion using data on 27,000 students from the Law School Admission Council. He found that more than half of black students were in the bottom tenth of their classes by the end of their first years. Black students entering law school were 135 percent more likely than their white counterparts not to complete a degree, and among those who did graduate, failure rates on the bar exam after repeated attempts were six times higher.

Sander projects that, while the elimination of...