Assessing Affirmative Action's Diversity Rationale

Ever since Justice Lewis Powell’s concurring opinion in Bakke made diversity higher education a constitutionally acceptable rationale for affirmative action programs 1978, the has received vehement criticism from across ideological spectrum. Critics on right have argued that efforts to attain will necessarily lead lower quality results, as “less meritorious” applicants are selected place of people with ostensibly stronger qualifications. left charged is “subterfuge” and an empty formulation. On rationale’s legitimacy, then, it would seem there precious little thought. In particular, prominent scholars jurists frequently cast doubt empirical foundations, claiming mere hypothesis, implausible, unsupported one at that. This critique its way into pages United States Reports, threatens foundations upon which rests. To assess rationale, we conduct study student-run law reviews. Over past several decades, many leading reviews implemented policies selecting editors. We investigate whether citations articles given review publishes change after adoption policy. Using dataset nearly 13,000 published by over 60-year period, find adopt see median their volumes increase roughly 23 percent five years adoption. addition exploring effect citations, also explore mean citations. When doing so, our estimates consistently positive, but they largely not statistically significant conventional levels. These findings implications well beyond setting. If diverse groups student editors perform better than non-diverse groups, lends credibility idea bodies, faculties, teams attorneys, employees generally all better. thus view these results empirically supporting much-derided rationale—support could prove critical continued viability today confronts numerous threats.