Law Firm Preferences - Podcast
Major American corporations are pressuring their outside law firms to meet diversity goals both firm-wide and in the legal teams assigned to the company’s work. For example, Facebook announced this year that the law firm teams working on its matters must consist of at least 33 percent women and minorities. This pressure has resulted in the widespread use of race and gender preferences in hiring, promotion, and work assignment decisions by America’s premier law firms. Are these preferences legal under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C. § 1981? Are they good policy? Curt Levey, a constitutional law attorney who has worked on several affirmative action cases – including the University of Michigan cases (Grutter and Gratz) – joined us to analyze the arguments on both sides of these questions.
Featuring:
President, Committee for Justice
Curt Levey is President of the Committee For Justice, an organization devoted to advancing constitutionally limited government and individual liberty. He is a veteran of Supreme Court and other judicial confirmation battles and serves on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Civil Rights Practice Group.
After graduating Harvard Law School with honors and clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Mr. Levey served as Director of Legal & Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR). There he worked on landmark Supreme Court cases, including the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and the successful constitutional challenge to the Violence Against Women Act. After CIR, Mr. Levey headed the Title IX policy group at the U.S. Department of Education.
Before attending law school, Mr. Levey earned an M.S. and B.A. in computer science from Brown University and worked in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He invented a new type of AI technology, for which he wrote a successful patent application.