Richard Sander

Last updated
Richard Sander
Born
Richard Henry Sander

(1956-05-26) May 26, 1956 (age 67)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Education Harvard University (BA)
Northwestern University (MA, JD, PhD)
OccupationLawyer

Richard Henry Sander (born May 26, 1956) is an American lawyer and professor of law at the UCLA School of Law and a critic of affirmative action, primarily known for the mismatch theory.

Contents

Education

Richard Sander was born on May 26, 1956, in Washington, D.C. [1] [2] He received his B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University in 1978, his M.A. in Economics from Northwestern University in 1985, his J.D. from Northwestern in 1988, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern in 1990. [3]

Career

Following his undergraduate degree in social studies, Sander became involved with the federal Vista program working with a housing group on the south side of Chicago. During his graduate studies at Northwestern, Sander served on the board of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee and was involved in the election effort of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor. [4] Sander joined the UCLA School of Law faculty in 1989, and became a full professor there five years later. [1] [3] As in Chicago, in the 1990s Sander was involved in fair housing efforts in Los Angeles. He was the President of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California, and in 1996 founded the Fair Housing Institute, helping City of Los Angeles design and implement its living wage law. [4]

Work on affirmative action

Studies


Sander is known for his research on affirmative action, which claims that it actually causes more negatives than benefits for African American law students by hurting them due to the overly competitive environments in more prestigious schools, through what he calls the "mismatch effect". He published his research in a 2004 article in Stanford Law Review where he claimed that if minority students had been admitted into less-competitive schools for which they would qualify without affirmative action, they would have been more successful. [5] [6] [7] He has also published studies suggesting that law firms' efforts to promote diversity sometimes led to them hiring underqualified black lawyers, leading to these lawyers being more likely than their better-credentialed white counterparts to leave the firm. [8] His research is controversial and has been widely criticized, including by Ian Ayres and Richard Brooks. Ayres and Brooks published a study in 2005 [9] finding that eliminating affirmative action would not increase the number of black lawyers by 7.9 percent, as Sander's study had claimed, but that it would instead reduce the number of lawyers by about 12.7 percent. [7] A 2008 study by Jesse Rothstein and Albert H. Yoon confirmed Sander's mismatch findings, but also found that eliminating affirmative action would "lead to a 63 percent decline in black matriculants at all law schools and a 90 percent decline at elite law schools." [10] [11] These high numbers predictions were doubted in the National Bureau of Economic Research article by Peter Arcidiacono and Michael Lovenheim; a lower, 32.5 percent was another decrease cited and considered in the article. Their 2016 article found a strong indication that racial preference results in a mismatch effect. They argued that the attendance by some African-American students to less-selective schools would significantly improve the low first attempt rate at passing the state bar, but they cautioned that such improvements could be outweighed by decreases in law school attendance. [11]

In 2006, and in order to gain further research information regarding his mis match theory, excepting individuals privacy information, Sander requested the California Bar to release its stored data of bar exam scores, grade point averages and LSAT scores including race and gender information of everyone who applied to the bar association. The bar denied this request based on privacy grounds. In 2008, and along with the First Amendment Coalition, Sander filed a lawsuit in California Supreme Court demanding the release of that information. On April 12, 2016, the court ruled that the California Bar was required to oblige with Sander's request. In 2018, however, the California Court of Appeals affirmed that the bar had no duty to release the records. [12] [13] [14]

In 2015, Sander filed a Brief Amicus Curiae In Support of Neither Party in regards to the affirmative action issue addressed by Supreme Court of the United States in Fisher v. University of Texas . [15]

In 2022, he wrote an article in Politico on the topic of the ongoing case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard . Sander encouraged the Supreme Court of the United States to extend the application of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to universities to limit their use of racial preferences, while leaving the issue in the realm of statutory law so that the United States Congress can address the issue as its sees fit. [16]

Book

Sander has also co-written a book, along with Stuart Taylor, Jr., entitled Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. which expresses similar views on affirmative action as his research. [17] The book was reviewed favorably in the New Republic by Richard Kahlenberg, who called it "perceptive" and said that it "presents a nuanced treatment of the issue". [18]

See also

Richard Sander participated in Intelligence squared debates: Affirmative Action Does More Harm Than Good

Related Research Articles

Affirmative action, also known as positive action or positive discrimination, involves sets of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to benefit particular groups that were historically discriminated against in areas in which such groups are underrepresented, mistreated or suffer from lack of public support—such as education and employment. Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve goals such as bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, promoting diversity, and redressing wrongs, harms, or hindrances.

Reverse discrimination is a term used to describe discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that involved a dispute of whether preferential treatment for minorities could reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, were impermissible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Law school in the United States</span> School offering post-graduate education in law

A law school in the United States is an educational institution where students obtain a professional education in law after first obtaining an undergraduate degree.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Bar Association</span> American association of lawyers

The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students; it is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation of model ethical codes related to the legal profession. As of fiscal year 2017, the ABA had 194,000 dues-paying members, constituting approximately 14.4% of American attorneys. In 1979, half of all lawyers in the U.S. were members of the ABA. The organization's national headquarters are in Chicago, Illinois, and it also maintains a significant branch office in Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1996 California Proposition 209</span> Ballot proposition that banned affirmative action in California

Proposition 209 is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education. Modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the California Civil Rights Initiative was authored by two California academics, Glynn Custred and Tom Wood. It was the first electoral test of affirmative action policies in North America. It passed with 55% in favor to 45% opposed, thereby banning affirmative action in the state's public sector.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legacy preferences</span> Preference given to applicants related to alumni

Legacy preference or legacy admission is a preference given by an institution or organization to certain applicants on the basis of their familial relationship to alumni of that institution. It is most controversial in college admissions, where students so admitted are referred to as legacies or legacy students. The practice is particularly widespread in the college admissions in the United States; almost three-quarters of research universities and nearly all liberal arts colleges grant legacy preferences in admissions.

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Mari J. Matsuda is an American lawyer, activist, and law professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She was the first tenured female Asian American law professor in the United States, at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law in 1998 and one of the leading voices in critical race theory since its inception. Matsuda returned to Richardson in the fall of 2008. Prior to her return, Matsuda was a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center, specializing in the fields of torts, constitutional law, legal history, feminist theory, critical race theory, and civil rights law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affirmative action in the United States</span>

In the United States, affirmative action consists of government-mandated, government-approved, and voluntary private programs granting special consideration to groups considered or classified as historically excluded, specifically racial minorities and women. These programs tend to focus on access to education and employment in order to redress the disadvantages associated with past and present discrimination. Another goal of affirmative action policies is to ensure that public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more representative of the populations they serve.

Stuart Taylor Jr. is an American journalist, author, and lawyer. He has served as a fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun from 1971 to 1974; The New York Times from 1980 to 1988, covering legal affairs and then primarily the Supreme Court; wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989 to 1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has coauthored two books.

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Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which validated some affirmative action in college admissions provided that race had a limited role in decisions.

Fisher v. University of Texas, 579 U.S. 365 (2016), also known as Fisher II, is a United States Supreme Court case which held that the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit correctly found that the University of Texas at Austin's undergraduate admissions policy survived strict scrutiny, in accordance with Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), which ruled that strict scrutiny should be applied to determine the constitutionality of the University's race-conscious admissions policy.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Richard Sander Biography". SEAPHE. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  2. ↑ "Richard Sander". Library of Congress. Retrieved 27 January 2016.
  3. 1 2 "Richard H. Sander". UCLA School of Law. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  4. 1 2 "Richard H. Sander Biography Page". law.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-05-06. Retrieved 2016-05-21.
  5. ↑ Sander, Richard (November 2004). "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools". Stanford Law Review. 57 (2): 367–483. JSTOR   40040209.
  6. ↑ "A legitimate reason for disputes over mismatch". Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
  7. 1 2 Bazelon, Emily (29 April 2005). "Sanding Down Sander". Slate. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  8. ↑ Williams, Carol J. (8 September 2008). "Does affirmative action help or hurt lawyers?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  9. ↑ Ayres, Ian (January 2005). "Does Affirmative Action Reduce the Number of Black Lawyers?". Stanford Law Review. 57.
  10. ↑ Jaschik, Scott (3 September 2008). "Attacking the 'Mismatch' Critique of Affirmative Action". Inside Higher Education. Retrieved 27 January 2016.
  11. 1 2 Arcidiacono, Peter; Lovenheim, Michael (March 2016). "Affirmative Action and the Quality-Fit Tradeoff". Journal of Economic Literature . 54 (1): 30, 31 and 69. doi:10.1257/jel.54.1.3. S2CID   1876963 . Retrieved May 25, 2016.
  12. ↑ Gershman, Jacob. "Long Legal Fight Over Access to California Bar Admissions Data Headed for Trial". WSJ. Archived from the original on 2016-05-26. Retrieved 2016-05-26.
  13. ↑ "STATE BAR ISSUES STATEMENT ON SANDER RULING". www.calbar.ca.gov. Archived from the original on 2016-05-26. Retrieved 2016-05-26.
  14. ↑ "Sander v. State Bar of California". Justia Law. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  15. ↑ "News". law.ucla.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-05-26. Retrieved 2016-05-26.
  16. ↑ S, Richard; er. "Opinion | The Supreme Court Has a Chance to Show Strategic Restraint". POLITICO. Retrieved 2022-11-05.
  17. ↑ Heriot, Gail (Winter 2013). "The Sad Irony of Affirmative Action". National Affairs. Retrieved 27 January 2016.
  18. ↑ Kahlenberg, Richard (10 October 2012). "Race to the Flop—The Problem with Affirmative Action". New Republic. Retrieved 27 January 2016.
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