Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences v. Harvard Law Review et al

Filing 1

COMPLAINT against All Defendants Filing fee: $ 400, receipt number 0101-7354972 (Fee Status: Filing Fee paid), filed by Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit 1, # 2 Exhibit 2, # 3 Exhibit 3, # 4 Exhibit 4, # 5 Exhibit 5, # 6 Exhibit 6, # 7 Civil Cover Sheet, # 8 Category Form )(Vien, George) Modified on 10/10/2018 (Montes, Mariliz).

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1995

Law Review Masks Diversity in a New Admission System
By LISA ANDERSON

In the competitive world of law school, where students scramble to distinguish
themselves from their peers, admission to a law review is an honor that can
enhance a career.
Now the editorial board of a prestigious law review has changed its selection
process, making it harder to determine who is admitted on merit alone and who is
selected partly on the basis of race or ethnicity.
The change, said members of the editorial board of The University of
Pennsylvania Law Review, is an effort to maintain the publication's affirmative
action program by insuring that qualified students -- most of them white -- are not
displaced by black and Hispanic students.
"We were actually displacing candidates with affirmative action candidates,"
said Katherine Kelly, the review's editor in chief. The policy, Ms. Kelly said, upset
some law students who failed to win admission to the law review and stigmatized
the black or Hispanic students who did.
"You would hear rumors circulating around the class that so-and-so made it
because of affirmative action," she said. "With something so competitive as law
review, people are going to give all kinds of reasons why they didn't make it."
Nine of the nation's top 20 law school reviews, including those at Cornell, Harvard,
New York University and the University of Virginia, have affirmative action policies
or diversity plans, according to documents made public last February at a
conference of the publications' editors at Stanford Law School.
At the University of Pennsylvania, as at most other selective law schools, the

majority of first-year students compete for law review. Gary Clinton, the dean of
students, said last year that 83 percent of the first-year students tried out. Only 20
percent were accepted, said Mr. Clinton who, following the dictates of the editorial
boards, selects students for the law review and for two other student-run academic
journals on campus.
Under the system in place last year, editorial board members said, the review
accepted 44 first-year students, who will join as associate editors in their second
year. All 44 had to meet certain minimum requirements. According to the
conference documents, those requirements last year consisted of scoring in the top
60 percent on the editing part of a two-part written test and in the top 90 percent
on the essay part.
From this select group, 18 students were chosen for the law review on the basis
of their combined score on the written test. Eighteen others were accepted on the
basis of their test score and grade point average.
Editorial board members of the review would not say whether those 36
reflected the ethnic and racial makeup of the class that was applying. If they did
not, then the minority students who had the highest scores would have been
chosen to fill as many of the eight remaining slots as was needed to mirror the
makeup of the class. If the review still had places available, it would have admitted
the next best candidates on the basis of their written test scores and grade point
averages, without considering race or ethnicity.
The key to the new system seems to be keeping secret newly established
numerical goals, so that law students will not be able to determine who is an
affirmative action appointment.
Later this month, when the law review chooses its new associate editors, it will
first select the number of students needed to run the publication -- but that
number will be kept secret. After those members have been chosen, the review will
accept an unstipulated number of affirmative action candidates on the basis of
their written test scores.
"We could either decide how many associate editors we wanted and reserve
some for affirmative action, or we could pick how many associate editors we
wanted and then pick some for affirmative action," Ms. Kelly said, describing the
policy shift. "It seems like a minor technical change but it isn't, because people
aren't being replaced because of affirmative action."
Although the old policy covered Asian-American students, she said the new

policy would apply only to groups that the law school considers historically
underrepresented -- black and Hispanic students.
"It really didn't make any difference at all in terms of the numbers," said Laura
Boschken, one of the review's five executive editors, referring to the new policy. "It
was more a perception. We just wanted to make things appear fair."
Last year, from the university's 231-member first-year class, which included 9
Asian-American students, 9 Hispanic students and 22 black students, the review
admitted 3 Asian-American students and 2 Hispanic students.
Ms. Kelly attributed the absence of black students in part to the low number
who participated in the competition; Mr. Clinton said only 11 tried out for the law
review. By contrast, virtually all of the Hispanic students and all of the AsianAmerican students applied.
Ms. Kelly said she met several months ago with members of the Black Law
Students Association to try to encourage a higher turnout of law review applicants.
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A version of this article appears in print on July 7, 1995, on Page A00017 of the National edition with the
headline: Law Review Masks Diversity in a New Admission System.

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