Black Student Enrollment at Harvard Law Drops by More Than Half

The number of Black students entering Harvard Law School dropped sharply this fall after last year’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, according to enrollment data released on Monday.Harvard Law enrolled 19 first-year Black students, or 3.4 percent of the class, the lowest number since the 1960s, according to the data from the American Bar Association.Last year, the law school’s first-year class had 43 Black students, according to an analysis by The New York Times.While changes in data calculation might explain some year-to-year changes, the decline at Harvard was much sharper than at other elite law schools.

It was notable not only for its severity but also because of the school’s past role in educating some of the nation’s best-known Black lawyers, including former President Barack Obama, the former first lady Michelle Obama, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.The Supreme Court decision, and the fact that Harvard College was named in the case, played a role, according to David B.Wilkins, a Harvard law professor who has studied Black representation in the legal profession.“This obviously has a lot to do with the chilling effect created by that decision,” Mr.

Wilkins said on Monday.“This is the lowest number of Black entering first-year students since 1965,” he added, pointing to numbers compiled by the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard, where he also serves as faculty director.That year, there were 15 entering Black students.

Since 1970, there have generally been 50 to 70 Black students in Harvard Law’s first-year class, he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subs...