Kennedy's Admission Quotas

Kennedy gives his ‘solution’ for the problem in America’s law schools in the final pages of his essay. I respect and understand his problems posed earlier in the work, yet I find this solution to be in some ways more troubling than the original problems that prompted them. Specifically, I found his idea for how admissions to be run to be problematic. It seems to me that he’s arguing for an affirmative-action-type program, which sends up red flags for me. I think that it is correct that law schools should have tests that establish the minimal legal skills for legal practice and avoid scaring off those who might not test well in certain areas but who are innately gifted for the legal profession. The idea of quotas, however, is ever troubling. Though people are not laws, I think we can take something from the legal theories we have studied and inspect his claim. I understand that proponents of the Critical Legal Studies believe that Law is most often advantageous to only the rich and powerful and as such they wish to use law as a social vehicle to change this dynamic. Kennedy’s admissions policy does go along with this for the most part, but I am having trouble seeing how a set of rules can determine the individual as meeting certain requirements. Is this use of quotas going to really provide the best people for the job? It seems to me that there can be examples in which favoring a quota for minorities can be just as damaging as favoring the elite upper class. These quotas seem (at least to me) as rules under the assumption that a student can be classified one way or another—which seems in opposition to the Critical Legal theorist who seems to deny that laws, rules, or even quotas, can be so fine cut to be understood in only one light. There are always exceptions and I think that would have to be taken into consideration if Kennedy’s idea of Admissions were to be put into practice.