Law Review Backs Minorities Strategy

The editors of the Harvard Law Review voted 42-39 yesterday to incorporate some form of "race conscious" affirmative action plan into the process of selecting future members of the law journal's staff.

In a three-and-one-half hour meeting at Pound Hall that was closed to the public, the editors decided to take race into account in some manner when selecting new Review editors but postponed a decision on any specific plan until December 2, Mark B. Helm '78, president of the Review, said after the meeting.

The members voting against the race-conscious proposal favored a "race neutral" affirmative action plan which would not take the race of applicants into consideration in the actual selection but would only give minorities more opportunities to apply.

Last February, the Review staff passed two race-conscious affirmative action policies by almost identical votes.

Many members of the Law School faculty objected to the plans because they felt the plans would detract from the Review's traditional, merit-based selection process. An ad hoc faculty committee and eventually the entire Law faculty asked the Review to reconsider its position and delay action on a policy until this fall.

Mixed Review

Michael R. Doyen, a member of the Review's affirmative action committee, said last week that a group of faculty members who discussed a new race-conscious plan offered by the Review gave the plan "mixed reviews." He added, "People are split on this the same way as in the past."

Yesterday's vote "doesn't really get us any further than last year," Helm said, adding that the vote was necessary because about half of the Review staff is new and some members thought majority support for a race conscious plan no longer existed.

Proposed Plan

The only race-conscious plan formally proposed--introduced by the Review's affirmative action committee--would allow students to be selected for membership on the basis of publishable "notes," Law Review articles students submit, as well as through the current selection process based on either grades or a writing competition. The plan would also allow students seeking admission through the current procedure to submit an essay for the membership committee's consideration on "economic, societal or education obstacles" they have overcome.

Howell Jackson, a Review editor who opposed adopting a race-conscious plan, said yesterday that he was considering introducing a proposal for an affirmative action plan favoring minority students in the selection process only when they compete for membership by submitting a note to the review.

Jackson said that "the people who decided the vote decided at the meeting." He added that the members did not know "which way it would go until just before the vote."