LSAT, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AND MINORITY ADMISSIONS, THE

St. John's Law Review, Winter 2006 by Baynes, Leonard M

INTRODUCTION

On January 7, 2005, at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools ("AALS"), the section on Minority Groups held a panel entitled: "The LSAT, U.S. News & World Report, and Minority Admissions." Professor Pamela Edwards of City University School of Law served as the moderator. Dayton Law Professor Vernellia Randall, Law School Admission Council President and Executive Director Philip Shelton, and Pennsylvania State Dickinson School of Law Assistant Dean of Admissions Janice Austin served as panelists. Brian Kelly, the Executive Editor of U.S. News & World Report was scheduled to be a panelist, but declined to participate merely three weeks before the conference. In a letter dated December 16, 2004, Mr. Kelly expressed his doubts about whether U.S. News could substantively add to the discussion and feared being in the "middle of a highly charged admissions policy dispute."1 The panel organizers were disappointed by the absence of Mr. Kelly and U.S. News, but his absence is emblematic of the difficulty in having a complex and nuanced discussion on race and admissions decisions.

Given the success of the AALS panel, on September 7, 2005, The Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John's University School of Law ("The Ronald H. Brown Center")2 held a conference on the same issue.

The September 7, 2005 conference brought together academics, admissions personnel, and other leading gatekeepers to the legal profession. The conference participants examined the impact of the ranking-frenzied atmosphere created by U.S. News & World Report on African American and Latino/a enrollments.3 Each of the panelists from the AALS panel participated and several other panelists added to the discussion including U.S. News, which was represented by Robert Morse, Director of Data Research. The AALS panel, The Ronald H. Brown Center conference on the same issue, and this St. John's Law Review symposium issue created an environment to pursue these full-bodied discussions.

Affirmative Action, Grutter, and U.S. News

In 2003, the United States Supreme Court decided two important cases that set the legal parameters for the use of race in university admissions. In Grutter v. Bollinger,4 the Supreme Court found Michigan Law School's admission program to be constitutionally sound.5 Through this program, Michigan Law School considered race as well as a variety of other factors to determine whether to admit law students.6 In its decision, the Supreme Court found that diversity was a compelling governmental interest, and Michigan's use of race as one of several factors in deciding whether to admit students was constitutional.7 The key for the Grutter Court was that Michigan Law School used an "individualized consideration" in determining who should be admitted.8 In contrast, on the same day, the Supreme Court found Michigan's undergraduate admissions program unconstitutional.9 Pursuant to this program, Michigan's undergraduate program would indiscriminately add extra points to applicants simply because they were members of minority groups.10 The Court found that this process was not narrowly tailored.11

In his article entitled When "Victory" Masks Retreat: The LSAT, Constitutional Dualism, and the End of Diversity, Miami Professor D. Marvin Jones finds that the Grutter decision moves minority admission into "the direction of token representation."12 Professor Jones predicts that African American law school enrollment will plummet to 3.5% leading to de facto segregation.13 He suggests that the reliance on the LSAT suggests African American inferiority and perpetuates historic narratives of African American inferiority.14

The symposium authors acknowledge that many law schools are failing to use Grutter's individualized determination of law school applicants; instead these law schools are evaluating applicants solely on their LSAT scores.15 These symposium authors argue that this over-reliance on an imperfect test that has a disparate impact on test takers of color constitutes race discrimination.16

U.S. News's Rankings

U.S. News provides the only commercially available ranking of ABA-accredited law schools. Its rankings are designed to provide prospective students and their parents with a means to differentiate between and among law schools. However, many law schools quickly discover ways to "game" the rankings system. Alex Wellen, the author of Barman,11 reported that some law schools will do almost anything to increase their U.S. News & World Report rankings.18 For example, he reported how Illinois Law School calculated the fair market value of online search engines, Lexis and Westlaw, even though Illinois received these services at a flat fee.19 This inflated amount allowed Illinois to claim that it spent 80 times more on students boosting Illinois's total student expenditures. Illinois engaged in this questionable practice even though student expenses account for only 1.5% of U.S. News's rankings methodology.20