Every May, the Duke Law Journal embarks on a two-week-long selection process to identify its new editorial team.
The process involves applicants crafting a 12-page memo, known as a casenote, which dissects an appellate court decision, and a 500-word essay outlining their potential contribution to the journal. The selection is based on academic performance, the quality of the casenote, and the personal statement. The journal, which is under the auspices of Duke Law School, only accepts less than a fifth of the class.
To assist students in their preparation for this rigorous competition, the journal provides a guide on how to write the casenote. However, last year, the journal decided to offer an additional document to some students. According to The Washington Free Beacon, this document, designed for the law school's affinity groups, encouraged minority students to emphasize their race and gender in their personal statements, promising extra points for doing so.
The document, exclusively obtained by The Washington Free Beacon, revealed the rubric used to assess personal statements. Applicants could gain up to 10 points for explaining how their "membership in an underrepresented group" would "lend itself to promoting diverse voices," and an additional 3-5 points if they "hold a leadership position in an affinity group."
To emphasize this point, the document included four examples of personal statements that had successfully secured a place on the law review. Three of these statements mentioned race in the opening sentence, with one student proudly stating, "[a]s an Asian-American woman and a daughter of immigrants, I am afforded with different perspectives, experiences, and privileges." Another student disclosed her identity as "a Middle Eastern Jewish woman" in the concluding paragraph, asserting that her "intersectional identity" would be beneficial in a "collaborative environment."
The document was exclusively distributed to the affinity groups, providing minority students with privileged information about the scoring process. The journal explicitly instructed these groups not to share the document with other students, according to messages reviewed by The Free Beacon.
In 2023, the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action, stating that colleges and universities could not use essays as a covert means of racial preference. The documents from Duke Law Journal illustrate how this prestigious law review has circumvented this directive, creating a points-based system that prioritizes race, potentially placing the law school in a precarious legal position.
David Bernstein, a professor of constitutional law at George Mason University, commented, "This is clearly illegal. Theyre using the personal statement as a proxy for race." He further noted that even if this were not the case, providing the rubric solely to the affinity groups constitutes unlawful discrimination.
The document was supervised by Gabriela Nagle Alverio, the journal's editor-in-chief, who holds a B.A. in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Stanford University and previously worked as a diversity consultant for Inclusion Design Group. The group, which has worked with numerous companies including Amazon and LinkedIn, aims to "create environments that are both culturally safe and brave."
Despite some law schools claiming independence from their corresponding law reviews, the Duke Law Journal is hosted on a university website and copyrighted by Duke Law School. The entire selection process is "refereed" by law school administrators, according to the journals "About Us" page. This likely subjects the journal to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the law the Supreme Court used to outlaw affirmative action.
Erin Wilcox, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, stated, "The Supreme Court was clear that both the Constitution and Title VI require individuals to be judged on their own unique qualifications, not on immutable characteristics like race or sex. This is true whether youre applying for admission to Harvard or a place on the Duke Law Journal."
Neither Duke Law School nor the universitys general counsel, Kim Taylor, responded to requests for comment.
This revelation comes as other law reviews face legal challenges regarding their admissions policies. The Michigan Law Review was recently sued for alleged discrimination against white applicants. Furthermore, three federal agencies are investigating the Harvard Law Review following the publication of documents by The Free Beacon, revealing the extent of the journals racial preferences.
The personal statement at Duke also appears to have fostered a culture of performative victimhood, with students claiming to have experienced vague and intangible harm from their white peers. One student wrote, "As a Latina woman, I am used to being a part of white, primarily male dominated fields. Growing up, my skills and abilities were always questioned, as if people had to make sure I could handle it."
Another student lamented that her first year at Duke Law "harkened back" to her childhood in a "white-majority community," where teachers "typecasted" her as a model student "before I even had the chance to speak." She expressed gratitude for the diverse group of friends and mentors she found at Duke, stating, "A diverse legal industry begins with a diverse law school experience, and I am committed to fostering an environment that welcomes the voices of marginalized groups."
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