When I was in law school (top 25 at the time) not a single african american graded onto the law review....in the entire 3 years that I was there....Some were allowed to sit on the law review because the “wrote” onto it.
Later, at my law firm, 3 of the first year associates were black...none made it to partner despite the firm pulling out all of the stops to help them achieve...the firm even hired a writing tutor for a black woman WHO HAD WRITTEN ONTO THE LAW REVIEW. You can’t make this stuff up.
You’ll have to explain what “writing onto the law review” means for the non-legal-minded people like myself.
Judging from your name (Tulane), and reading your comments, we may have attended the same law school, because my experiences were the same.
When I was in law school, I had to take a class in legal writing. The teacher was a black woman who was just hired by the school. She was a graduate from Yale Law School and had worked at the public defender’s office in Richmond, VA before being hired. The teacher had an assistant, who was a current member of the School’s law review.
During the class, we had to write legal briefs, etc. every time I wrote a brief, the teacher gave me a low mark. When I asked the student advisor (writer for the law review) where I was wrong and how I could improve, the student looked at my paper and said there was nothing wrong and she would have given me a much higher mark. Unfortunately, only the teacher’s marks counted.
I ended the course with a mediocre grade and lots of frustration.
BTW, the teacher was let go at the end of the term. The reason - incompetency.
After I graduated, the new Dean, who had been a law clerk for Thurgood Marshall, decided there were not enough blacks in the school (at the time a top 20-25 school) the goal was 20% of the student body. The ones they let in had to take remedial English classes to get them up to speed with the non-black students.
When they graduated a vast majority of these students could not pass the bar exam.
Because of the lowering of the overall passing rate of the graduates, and other factors due to the programs implemented by the Dean, the schools reputation suffered. The school is not considered a “top 50” law school now.