Law School Faculties have a serious diversity problem

GrundleStiltzkin

Measuring Diversity: Law Faculties in 1997 and 2013

The data show that in 1997 women and minorities were underrepresented compared to some populations, but Republicans and Christians were usually more underrepresented. For example, by the late 1990s, the proportion of the U.S. population that was neither Republican nor Christian was only 9%, but the majority of law professors (51%) was drawn from that small minority. Further, though women were strongly underrepresented compared to the full-time working population, all of that underrepresentation was among Republican women, who were — and are — almost missing from law teaching.

By some measures, in 1997 the most underrepresented racially defined groups were Non-Hispanic white Republicans and non-Hispanic white Protestants, the latter being pejoratively known as WASPs, the supposed dominant group. This pattern of representation in law teaching tends to show that diversity hiring and affirmative action hiring would point in different (but sometimes overlapping) directions — affirmative action hiring toward recruiting more women and minorities, diversity hiring toward recruiting more Republicans, Christians, and Latinas. Thus, in law school faculty hiring, diversity does not equal affirmative action; the diversity groups are not the same as the affirmative action groups. Further, hiring women and minorities of the sort usually hired will increase the variety of viewpoints on the left, but will make law faculties less representative of the political views of the general public.