The Bar is Racist. #DiplomaPrivilegeNow

Some history from George B. Shepherd, No African-American Lawyers Allowed: The Inefficient Recism of the ABA's Accreditation of Law Schools, 53 J. Legal Educ. 103 (2003)

“In 1910 the U.S. had only 795 black lawyers; this was only .7 percent of the profession, although blacks were 11.1 percent of the population. In 1914 the ABA accidentally admitted its first three blacks." 109

"Recognizing its mistake, it rescinded their admission, stating that ‘the settled practice of the Association has been to elect only white men to membership.’ The ABA formally excluded blacks until 1943.” 109

“Despite oppressive racial discrimination in law schools and the legal profession, the number of African-American lawyers doubled between 1900 and 1940, both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of the professional—although the number of black attorneys was still small.” 110

“the bar acted to stop the influx of new minority lawyers in two new ways that did not involve the overt discrimination that was becoming increasingly difficult: decreasing bar exam pass rates and tightening law school accreditation.” 110

“It was no coincidence that bar pass rates plummeted and mandatory accreditation began at exactly the time when minorities were finally overcoming overt discrimination and becoming lawyers." 110

"The bar exam and accreditation were the ABA's new line of defense against minorities that the ABA erected after overt discrimination began to fail.” 110

“Although the ABA asserted that tough bar exams and accreditation were necessary for consumer protection, the calls for consumer protection came only when many new minority lawyers were beginning to compete effectively with the ABA's members." 110

"Manipulation of the bar exam and accreditation for economic purposes had an important racial component. The groups which threatened existing lawyers economically, and which the lawyers therefore sought to exclude, were racial and ethnic minorities.” 110

“The words of bar officials and law school representatives make clear that a main reason for the new requirements was to purify the legal profession of minorities who were now competing with white lawyers.” 110

“The dean of the University of Chicago Law School wrote that a requirement of two years of college would be 'a rational, beneficent measure of reducing hereafter the spawning mass of promiscuous semi-intelligence which now enters the bar.’” 111

“The dean of the Wisc Law School told the annual AALS mtg: ‘If you examine the class rolls of the night schools...you will encounter a very large proportion of foreign names...It is this class of lawyers that causes Grievance Committees of Bar Associations the most trouble.’” 111

“The ABA's campaign of racist self-interest in the 1930s succeeded...manipulation of both the bar exam and accreditation reduced substantially the entry into the profession...ensur[ing] that fewer blacks entered the legal profession than under earlier overt discrimination.“ 113

“The stated rationale for both the bar exam and [accreditation] is consumer protection...protect the public from incompetent lawyers from shoddy law schools...[and] protect students who have little chance of passing the bar from being enrolled by unscrupulous law schools.” 126

“This second concern, however, derives completely from the first: without the concern for consumer protection, there would be no bar exam, and thus no possibility that law schools could mislead students about passing it." 126

"Of course, the true goal of the bar exam and accreditation requirements may have little to do with consumer protection; history shows that the true objective has often been to reduce competition by excluding disfavored racial groups.” 126

"Although the poor and the middle class might benefit marginally from the protections that accreditation provides, accreditation tends to make legal services too expensive for these groups to afford.” 107

“accreditation and the bar exam may have caused malpractice and fraud to be more frequent...lull[ing] the public into the dangerously false belief that any lawyer who has graduated from an accredited school and passed the bar is competent and trustworthy for any legal task.” 107

“Those who presently operate the system do not harbor personal racist beliefs; they merely believe that admitting more lawyers into the profession, many of whom would be black, would harm consumers and the profession." 106

"However, these well-intentioned people tenaciously enforce a deeply discriminatory system with roots in a racist past... It is the system's discriminatory impacts, openly intended by those who originally established the system, that make it [racist].” 106