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Why Affirmative Action Does Not Cause Black Students To Fail the Bar |
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Daniel E. Ho [View as PDF]
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114 Yale L.J. 1997 (2005)
In a widely discussed empirical study, Richard Sander concludes that affirmative action at U.S. law schools causes blacks to fail the bar. If correct, this conclusion would turn the jurisprudence, policy, and law of affirmative action on its head. But the article misapplies basic principles of causal inference, which enjoy virtually universal acceptance in the scientific community. As a result, the study draws internally inconsistent and empirically invalid conclusions about the effects of affirmative action. Correcting the assumptions and testing the hypothesis directly shows that for similarly qualified black students, attending a higher-tier law school has no detectable effect on bar passage rates.
Part I clarifies the assumptions implicit in Sander's study and explains the inconsistent and indefensible premises on which it rests. Part II presents results from a reanalysis of the data, using alternative methods that correct and reduce the role of these unjustifiable assumptions. The reanalysis suggests that Sander's conclusions are untenable on their own terms. Part III concludes.
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