Hispanic Heritage Month Editorial # 2

The Hispanic1 Law School Experience in IRAC Form

By Joshua Nunez, Student

The Facts:

Hispanics are a minority group in law school; to convince yourself, take a look around in your next class or your next law review or SBA get-together. If that does not convince you, consider a Columbia survey stating that out of 46,500 law school matriculants in 2008, 673 were Mexican-American and 3,392 were African-American, translating to 1.6 percent and 7.9 percent respectively.1 The survey explains that despite higher LSAT scores by minorities from 1993 to 2008, minority admission rates are decreasing.1

I am Hispanic. I learned the Spanish language before the English language. At age 12, I picked cotton in the fields of West Texas. The labor was “hard” and the pay was cheap. As the summers went on, I soon realized that 100% of my fellow cotton-pickers were Hispanic and that most of them were undocumented. In fact, the only reason they picked cotton was because farmers did not bother to ask proper documentation; farmers also paid in cash. Farm owners would provide abysmal housing for the seasonal cotton pickers, and as I saw it, would use the housing as leverage against the cotton pickers. In addition, Farmer tended not to deal with cotton pickers individually. Instead, the farm owner utilized his farm-hand to do his dirty business.

The Issue: Does Hispanic heritage affect the way a Hispanic student experiences law school?

The Majority Rule: A scholar would first define Hispanic heritage1. Next, two important questions would be answered: what is law school, and how do you get an A in it?1 Then, the scholar would analyze and answer the question posed in light of the above rules, providing empirical and theoretical findings to substantiate the claim.

The Minority Rule:

Because I am not a scholar, I must apply a different rule. Being that I posed the question and now offer a response, I suppose I can pick the rule and give it a name: I will call it The Minority Rule, a rule providing that answering whether Hispanic heritage affects the way a Hispanic student experiences law school requires analyzing Hispanicstudents’ experiences as individuals and then arriving at a collective determination as to how they experience law school.

While this approach may not lead to a definitive answer, at a minimum, the rule invites Hispanic students to reflect on how their Hispanic heritage affects their law school experience. The rule encourages professors to apply a true student-centered approach to teaching by incorporating cultural sensitivities to their teaching methodology. And finally, the rule encourages dialogue between Hispanic and non-Hispanic students interested in learning how specific issues affect Hispanic students.

The Analysis:

My heritage helps me understand certain legal principles. For example, when I think of an agency relationship, I think of the farm owner hiding behind his farm-hand to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Also, in my Property I course, a recent trend in landlord/tenant law favoring tenants’ rights over landlords’ rights was highlighted. Every time I noted the word tenant I thought of the farm workers. I eagerly read my casebook and welcomed the trend. My law school peers were not so happy about the trend. In fact, another Hispanic student was the most vocal in stating his displeasure with it. In my case, my personal experiences and heritage help me analyze legal principles and encourage me to take a firm position when discussing policy in class.

My heritage also affects the way I interact with some students and Professors. For instance, because it is possible that my parents were once undocumented immigrants in some country other than the U.S.A, I experience anger, a righteous type of anger, when a Professor characterizes a certain kind of immigrant as an “illegal.” Surely, a sense of cultural sensitivity would favor using a more elegant term.

In addition, because my American citizenship may have been conferred to me by virtue of the jus soli legal principle, a principle the 14 Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects, I am always willing and ready to discuss the presently hot topic of birth right citizenship. What I am not willing to do, however, is to have a fellow law student talk to me about his or her disdain towards “anchor babies”. This term is derogatory, misdirected, and offensive. My heritage tells me so. It would be nice if during this Hispanic Heritage Month, other students would be willing to consider that blurting out certain terms affects my law school experience and perhaps that of other Hispanics.

The Conclusion:

In conclusion, the answer to the question is the proverbial law school answer: it depends. In my case, I conclude that my Heritage not only affects my law school experience but it defines it. Whether the same is true of every Hispanic law student, however, I cannot say.

I hope that Hispanic students reflect on how their Hispanic heritage affects their law school experience, if at all. I encourage professors claiming to be student-centered in their teaching approach to join the Hispanic Law Student Association in its various events as it commemorates Hispanic Heritage Month. Finally, I hope this narrative serves as an invitation for dialogue between students with views adverse to Hispanic interests and Hispanic students.

1 In this narrative, I collectively refer to Hispanic, Latino, or Latina as Hispanic.

1 Conrad Johnson, A Disturbing Trend in Law School Diversity, http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/salt/. The Columbia study finds “that among the 46,500 law school matriculants in the fall of 2008, there were 3,392 African-Americans, or 7.3 percent, and 673 Mexican-Americans, or 1.4 percent. Among the 43,520 matriculants in 1993, there were 3,432 African-Americans, or 7.9 percent, and 710 Mexican-Americans, or 1.6 percent.” Tamar Lewin, Law School Admissions Lag Among Minorities, The New York Times: Education, Jan. 6, 2010, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/education/07law.html (last visited Sept 13, 2010).

1 Id. 1 See Generally, USA.gov: Government Made Easy, Frequently Asked Questions: Hispanic Heritage Month, http://answers.usa.gov/cgi-bin/gsa_ict.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=7125 (providing Presidents Johnson and Reagan’s roles in establishing the Hispanic Heritage Month); U.S. Census Bureau, Facts for Features: Hispanic Heritage Month 2010, Jul. 15, 2010, http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb10-ff17.html (providing, among other things, that with 48.4 million Hispanics, the U.S. is ranked second only to Mexico in Hispanic worldwide population); Hispanic Heritage Month, Heritage, Diversity, Integrity, and Honor: The Renewed Hope of America, www.hispanicheritagemonth.gov (exhibiting select Hispanic Americans’ contributions to American culture, including, among others, Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Dr. Severo Ochoa, Nobel-prize winning physicist, and Admiral David G. Farragut, U.S. Navy); 1 The scholar would answer that law school is a place where one set of individuals, students, are taught “the law” by a second set of individuals, attorneys; the former would be presented as aspiring attorneys and the latter as aspiring educators. Additionally, the scholar would note that the students are required to read a large amount of cases, indeed an unconscionable amount, while the educators are free to read any amount on the art of teaching and on the topic of diversity. The scholar would point out that educators can sniff out instances where a student has not completed a reading assignment just as students can sniff out those educators that do not value diversity (the scholar would probably not use the terms “sniff out”). Finally, the scholar would probably propose that students exposed to real-life- attorney-work tend to have an upper hand in learning the law just as educators who have had real life contact with diverse groups would have an upper hand in their abilities to educate a diverse set of students.