Symposium
35th
Anniversary Symposium
 “Regression
Analysis: The Status of African Americans in American Legal Education”
The question whether African Americans have progressed or
regressed within the field of legal education in the 50 years since Brown v.
Board of Education has incited vigorous discussion within academic and
political circles. Certainly, African-Americans have made gains within higher
education generally and legal education specifically as evidenced by the
increased number of college educated African-American professionals and
increased enrollment of African-Americans at some of the nation’s most
prestigious universities. In 1970, when the National Black Law Journal (NBLJ)
was founded, 3,875 African Americans practiced law. Today, that number has
increased to nearly 40,000.
The gains made following Brown result not only from that
landmark judicial decision but also from the struggles of social movements to
create policies designed to open opportunities to
African-Americans—opportunities previously denied due to systemic racial
discrimination. In the years since Brown, many of the policies that were
directed toward redressing discrimination in legal education have either been
significantly undermined or eliminated altogether. For example, in California,
Washington, and Texas affirmative action has been made unlawful, while
re-segregation of the K-12 system has been tolerated.
Impacts from these regressive trends in California are
demonstrated in the declining enrollment of African Americans at the University
of California’s most prestigious institutions, UCLA and UC Berkeley, where
African-American undergraduate and graduate enrollment has fallen well below the
percentages of the late 1960’s when affirmative action was in its initial
stages.
Although the Supreme Court recently affirmed the
constitutionality of affirmative action programs in legal education in
Grutter v. Bollinger, the debate regarding its efficacy continues. The focus
of this debate has turned to educational outcomes of African-American law
students and whether or not African Americans are well served by the continued
existence of the affirmative action.
Through this symposium, we seek to interrogate the various
assertions and assumptions related to and embedded within this discussion. We
seek to analyze the various facets and variables within legal education that
impact African-American achievement in law school and in the profession. We
invite students and scholars alike to contribute to and engage in this important
discussion via submission of articles for publication in the NBLJ and
attendance at the symposium. We solicit articles on various questions related to
this theme, including but not limited to:
-
Has American legal
education ever fully integrated the African-American experience into the
classroom?
-
What impact do social
attitudes on race have on educational outcomes? What is the role of
stereotypes of black intellectual deficits in shaping the institutional
environment?
-
What is the impact of
phenomena such as “stereotype threat” on the educational outcomes of African
Americans?
-
How does the
institutional environment of American law schools affect the achievement of
African-American law students?
By facilitating this symposium, we reaffirm the mission of
NBLJ to “put before the public articles and ideas on areas of law affecting
black people and offer guidelines for action.” This charge takes on greater
significance as we approach the 35th anniversary of NBLJ and look back at
the progress of African Americans in the law and our challenges as we move
forward.
Download the Program
|
|
Symposium Program
Please distribute widely
|
Download the Flyers
|
|
NBLJ Symposium Flyers
Please distribute widely
|
|
| 
