Keywords: affirmative action, UCLA, minority lawyers, bar exam, lawyer, standardized testing, SAT, ACT, LSAT, Richard Sander

Richard Sander, a law professor at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), wants to examine whether affirmative action at law schools sets up Black students for failure by admitting them into rigorous academic environments for which they are ill-prepared to compete, The Los Angeles Times reports. Sander hopes to explain why Blacks are four times as likely as whites to fail the bar exam on the first try. Sander asked the state bar for access to detailed demographic data collected from exam-takers since 1972 but the state bar refused, citing privacy concerns.

Sander angered many people two years ago with an assessment of affirmative action that Harvard professor Deborah Waire Post said was akin to "the late 19th and early 20th century when this country was beset by 'scholars' and 'scientists' who constructed theories of racial inferiority to justify the subordination of African Americans," according to The Los Angeles Times.

Sander says affirmative action hurts Black law students--the very people it is supposed to help. Sander has his defenders, such as Doug Williams, an associate professor of economics at Sewanee University of the South in Tennessee. Williams says researching results will test "why there are racial gaps in law school graduation rates and bar passage," The Los Angeles Times reports.

But objectors say student privacy will be violated. For example, The Los Angeles Times reported that one woman opposed to Sander's research said she was the only Black woman in her UCLA law-school class so it would be obvious she was a subject in Sander's study. There are too few Black law students for the study to remain anonymous.

Click here to read the full story in The Los Angeles Times.