Document Type
Brief
Publication Date
10-29-2015
Abstract
Richard Lempert retired from the University of Michigan, as the Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology, having chaired the Sociology Department and served on leave as the Division Director for the Social and Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation. In these positions he worked to promote the fair and intelligent use of social science evidence by agencies and courts, writing frequently on this topic. Reading briefs submitted in this case, he believes the Court is at risk of being misled about the state of relevant social science and seeks to caution the Court against relying on claims that lack a sound empirical foundation.
There is considerable writing on academic mismatch and on whether colleges and universities can through class-based affirmative action achieve the racial and ethnic diversity that this Court, in an unbroken string of cases, has recognized as a compelling state interest. Regents of the Univ. of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), Fisher v. University of Texas, 133 S. Ct. 2411 (2013). In the current case, mismatch receives its most extensive treatment in the Amicus Brief submitted by Richard Sander, while the argument that class-based affirmative action can adequately substitute for race-sensitive admissions is most forcefully advanced in the brief submitted by Richard Kahlenberg. In each brief the extant literature is not correctly characterized. The overwhelming weight of reliable evidence indicates that academic overmatch (attending a school where one's academic credentials are below those of most students; hereinafter "mismatch") has few, if any, adverse effects on minority students and quite likely enhances their prospects for graduation and job success. Moreover, some studies that proponents of the mismatch hypothesis heavily rely on are so fundamentally flawed that they offer the Court nothing of value.
Class-based preferences may deserve consideration for their own sake, but extant research, simple demographics and financial costs mean that they not only cannot replace race sensitivity as a tool for creating educationally valuable racial and ethnic diversity, but also that reliance on them would, on average, lower the academic qualifications of admitted students.
Recommended Citation
Lempert, Richard O., "Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin: Brief Amicus Curiae for Richard Lempert in Support of Respondents" (2015). Appellate Briefs. 98.
https://repository.law.umich.edu/briefs/98
