The View from Right Field

Affirmative Action, Law School, and the LSAT

With the Supreme Court prohibiting affirmative action in college admissions, I would not be surprised if more and more colleges eliminate, or greatly reduce, the role of standardized tests in the admission process.  Law schools will probably do the same with the Law School Admission Test, the LSAT, if they have not already done so.  Which makes me a little sad because I’m pretty sure it was the LSAT that got me into the law school I went to. 

Some people get into law schools because their parents went there or somebody makes a big contribution.  (Given the tuition to law schools today, paying the full list price might almost be considered making a big contribution.)  Other students check different boxes that help them get in.  I had the LSAT.

The Diversity We Are Missing Today

In of his new book, Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy, Jeffrey Garton writes about the meetings at Camp David on August 13 to 15, 1971, when Richard Nixon and small group of advisers¹ broke the link between gold and the US dollar (i.e., “closing the gold window”), instituted wage-and-price controls, and more.²  In describing the meeting Mr. Garton emphasizes there was a real diversity among those present.  It was not, course, a diversity of race or sex.  They were all white men.  (It was, after all, 1971.)  But there was a diversity of viewpoints.  Coming into the meeting, some opposed wage-and-price controls (President Nixon had always opposed them because of his experience in the Office of Price Administration in 1942); some were okay with them.  Some thought we needed to close the gold window immediately; others wanted to do the rest of the program and then wait and see.  The investment tax credit, which had recently been repealed, was to be reinstated.  The key was that a number of people with different viewpoints met, talked, and in a weekend came up with a set of policies to change the world economic system.³