Legal Education and the Politics of Exclusion

In economic affairs the social advantages of competition are least apparent to disappointed competitors. Domestic firms call for protection against low price imports: Let there be tariffs and import quotas. Skilled workers lobby for protection against low wage rivals: Let there be minimum wage laws, maximum hours laws, and collective bargaining. Businesses work overtime to keep out new rivals: Let there be exclusionary zoning and licensing. Pitted in opposition to these legislative fixes is a shrinking band of market economists who celebrate the systematic gains that competition generates over its rival forms of social organization. The only protection that anyone is entitled to have against economic competitors is to offer customers lower prices or higher quality services. The disappointed competitor may lose, but those private losses are more than matched by the vitality that is given to the system as a whole. Persons who fail at one endeavor can pick up the pieces, refine their act, shift their occupation, and try again.' In the wake of short-term competitive dislocations is a vigor that ripples its way through the economic and social system. The unending struggle between competition and protection also exists within the academic setting. Here too the forces of exclusion have gathered strength in recent years. The pressures, however, are not those of the usual economic groups concerned with trade in standard goods and services. Rather, these pressures stem from greater demands from women and members of minority groups for increased position, voice, and influence inside the academy. A generation ago, those groups appealed to the language of open market competition for a more intensive role, underscoring the injustice of passing over more qualified women and minority candidates because of their race or sex. The charge was that universities in general, and law schools in particular, were tight little islands dominated by a group of like-thinking

Law and economics · Legal Education · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Legal Education and Practice Innovations

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