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Also in the big #MakeMeSmart this week, you know what I've gotten obsessed with? The bar exam. So turns out, multiple states are insisting on holding bar exams *in person* this month, putting students at risk or ensuring only young healthy probably white people show up. 1/
And that's draconian and dangerous and exclusionary in a pandemic, but it turns out the bar exam *always has been* draconian and exclusionary. 2/ https://theappeal.org/2020-bar-exam-coronavirus-inequities-legal-system/
Three states are letting graduates enter the bar without taking the exam, something called "diploma privilege," based on the crazy idea that if you graduated from law school, you uh, are a lawyer, no elitist and death-defying test required. 3/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/07/13/why-this-pandemic-is-good-time-stop-forcing-prospective-lawyers-take-bar-exams/
And THAT is forcing what, I am just finding out, is a very long overdue conversation about the racist gatekeeping that prompted the invention of the bar exam in the first place /4 https://twitter.com/danielle__craig/status/1276889746405384192
Plus, as many lawyers are pointing out, the idea that the bar exam protects society from bad lawyers is hard to defend considering you can take one test, one time, and then do basically anything you want forever. Even a driver's license doesn't work like that. 5/
Anyway, it's all fascinating, and if you think about how we've spend 100 years making sure that primarily well-off white people, mostly men, become lawyers and judges, and you look around society and wonder how it might be different if our judiciary were more equal 6/
You can see why it's kind of a big deal. Don't even get me started on how you're not allowed to bring a tampon to a bar exam because, I guess, tampon cheating? Anyway. #barpocalypse and #DiplomaPrivilegeNow and #barexam have more info. And the show! https://www.marketplace.org/shows/make-me-smart-with-kai-and-molly/u-s-china-relations-are-bad-but-are-they-new-cold-war-bad/
Oh HEY, Louisiana just enacted diploma privilege! I see I jumped on this topic at exactly the right time. Lol. https://www.nola.com/news/courts/article_411d4088-cb94-11ea-88cd-c74f58da6f9f.html
