The American Bar Association (ABA) began as a guild that was mainly interested in protecting its members from competition (which it accomplished through state “unauthorized practice of law” prohibitions). That was bad enough, but in recent decades, it has gone woke, embracing all sorts of lefty positions including the supposed moral imperative of “diversity” in law schools. One of its accreditation standards tells law schools that they must admit students to achieve that objective.
Then the Supreme Court ruled against racial preferences — what was the ABA to do?
As lawyer Mark Pulliam explains in today’s Martin Center article, the ABA wants to keep on pushing this ridiculous bit of social engineering, but is looking for a way around the Court’s decision against it.
He writes:
If the ABA were truly concerned about promoting the highest level of professionalism and quality among lawyers, it would encourage—even require—law schools to rely on applicants’ objective merit to determine admissions. Instead, the ABA pursues woke social engineering through sophistry such as “holistic” admissions, which amounts to an unseemly end run around the ban on racial preferences. The ABA’s proposed revisions are an invitation for future litigation, producing a sequel to Students for Fair Admissions in which the Court must rebuke recalcitrant law schools for ignoring its admonition that “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”
The good news, Pulliam reports, is that a number of state attorneys general have weighed in against the ABA’s proposed new language meant to continue racial preferences. In fact, there is no reason at all why the ABA should have any power over legal education. The best-case scenario would be for the feds to take away that improvidently granted power.