Protecting Diversity: Can We Afford to Throw Out Grutter Before Its Expiration Date?

• In Event: Social Science Analyses of Emerging Legal Dilemmas

Abstract

As the Supreme Court of the United States prepares to reconsider the precedent set forth in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), we examine the necessity of affirmative action in law school and graduate study. Our research questions focus on the retention benefits educational diversity affords to underrepresented people of color (POC) (in an analysis of the effects of law school diversity on POC attrition), and the effects of a state-level affirmative action ban on graduate enrollment diversity in Michigan. These models utilize binomial regression with partial pooling and Poisson regression with a difference-in-differences estimator, respectively. We find that POC withdraw less often from more diverse institutions, and that Michigan’s affirmative action ban had a slight negative effect on POC graduate enrollment.

Authors

• Jason Scott, AccessLex institute
  Presenting Author

• Paige Matthews Wilson, AccessLex Institute
  Presenting Author