Texas Review of Law & Politics, Volume 20, Number 2, Spring 2016 Page: 197
169-420 p.View a full description of this periodical.
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Affirmative Action in Law School Admissions
learning environment (discussed further below) .102
Sander and his co-author Stuart Taylor,Jr., who wrote about the
challenges in obtaining public admissions data from, inter alia,
UCLA's School of Law, aptly posit that universities do not want to
disclose public-admissions data and student outcomes largely
because such a disclosure would highlight the magnitude of race-
based preferences and the meager outcomes for many students
admitted because of those preferences.103Their data were bleak:
"[B] lack law graduates fail bar exams at four times the [W]hite
rate."104 Academic-support programs did not cause dramatic
changes in bar passage rates.105 "But [minorities] aren't told of
their significant disadvantage when they enter, and so they're
effectively being set up to fail."'06
By 1997, half of UCLA School of Law's African-American
students scored in the lowest 10% of their classes, while about half
of the school's Hispanic students did only somewhat better-
landing in the bottom 20%.107 This should be of little surprise after
examining these students' incoming academic profiles.108 The
aforementioned disparity translated quite predictably in first-time
bar passage rates: African-Americans-50%; Hispanics-70%;
Whites-90%.109 Perhaps obviously, failing the bar is financially and
emotionally taxing, and many who fail to pass the bar on their first
try simply never pass."10
This phenomenon is in no way unique. At the University of Texas
School of Law, less than 10% of White graduates failed the bar the
first time. However, over 50% of African-American graduates failed
on their first try, and half of those failed again on their second
attempt.1"
Sander and Taylor see the victims of large racial preferences-
and they are typically large-as those receiving preferences and
doing poorly as a result."2 A "cascade effect" intensifies this
102. Berkowitz, supra note 76.
103. SANDER & TAYLOR, supra note 1, at 171.
104. Id. at 4.
105. Id. at 56.
106. Id. at 6.
107. Id. at 55.
108. Id.
109. Id.
110. Id. at 52.
111. Id. at 205.
112. Id. at 6, 18-19.No. 2
197
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University of Texas at Austin. School of Law. Texas Review of Law & Politics, Volume 20, Number 2, Spring 2016, periodical, March 2016; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth838701/m1/43/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.