Barriers to entry: A market lock-in model of discrimination

The Justice Department yesterday filed an antitrust suit against members of the majority race, alleging that the group has harmed the public, consumers, and rivals by excluding Black and Latino/a competitors from the law school admissions market.(1) The Department alleges that a monopoly by whites has restricted competition and stifled innovation in legal education and the broader profession. The government's central claim focuses on historical misconduct, rather than any contemporary wrongdoing. The complaint alleges that whites at the turn of the century monopolized the benefits of law school admissions for nearly one hundred years, by keeping nonwhites out of law schools. Specifically, the Department charges that the cartel's early monopoly power became self-perpetuating because the cartel imposed law school admission criteria that favored whites. According to the complaint, "[b]ecause whites were able to bar entry for minorities early on in modem legal education, they were able to impose their own standards for competition, and to chart a path for legal education very different from the path that might have been taken had people of color been permitted to compete. "