The number of Black students admitted to the latest Harvard Law class has decreased with a reported steep decline in both Black and Hispanic student enrollment, according to data reported by The Harvard Crimson.
Also reported to the American Bar Association, Harvard Law’s J.D. Class of 2027 reportedly includes just 19 Black students. The previous class had 43 Black students, meaning that enrollment this year decreased by more than 50%.
The number of Hispanic students also decreased, with the enrollment rate dropping from 63 students to 32 students.
In a statement shared with ABC News, the president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association, Sean Wynn, highlighted Black lawyers’ impact on the judicial system and emphasized the harm a smaller cohort of Black students could have.
“Making sense of this jarring corpus with a smaller community is a tall order in and of itself, made even more difficult with the added expectation that these students provide a ‘Black perspective’ in class discussions,” said Wynn. “The demographic shift places significant pressure on those few Black students present to represent the Black community, in all its variety and complexity, during conversations about the law.”
The share of Black students enrolled in Harvard Law’s J.D. Class of 2027 fell by more than 4 percentage points compared to the previous year, according to enrollment data released by the school on Monday.@akshayaravi22 reports.https://t.co/BvKqQAikQa
— The Harvard Crimson (@thecrimson) December 17, 2024
The decrease in enrollment of Black students comes a year after the Supreme Court ended affirmative action.
Last June, the Supreme Court ruled to end race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities, prohibiting the implementation of affirmative action policies. Per the judges, affirmative action reportedly violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
Put into effect by the conservative majority, in an opinion writted by Chief Justice John Roberts, the conservative judges claimed that they ruled against affirmative action because the programs allegedly led to racial stereotyping with no end point.
Only three judges dissented. Judges Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, along with Judge Sonia Sotomayor, ruled against ending affirmative action.
“The result of today’s decision is that a person’s skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion, but it cannot play a role in assessing that person’s individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment,” wrote Sotomayor after the announcement of the ruling. “That indefensible reading of the Constitution is not grounded in law and subverts the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.”
Per the Harvard Crimson, for Harvard Law, the ending of affirmative action has led to the implementation of a new “Statement of Purpose” to substitute the personal statement that was previously required.
