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Racial Diversity and Affirmative Action in American Law Schools

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Abstract

We study racial diversity in American law schools and the impact of state-level affirmative action bans. Using novel data on enrollment in every law school since 1980, we find that minority shares of enrollment grew from 11 to 32 percent but still lagged behind minority shares of potential law school candidates, which grew from 16 to 43 percent. Exploiting 12 state-level affirmative action bans, we find that affirmative action bans decrease racial diversity by 17 percent and that all the decrease came from enrolling fewer Black and Hispanic students.

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