When Maya Parthasarathy applied to join the admissions committee of the California Law Review in 2025, she highlighted her former role at Politico and framed her experience as a tool for advancing diversity, equity and inclusion within the journal.
Parthasarathy, who previously oversaw entry‑level hiring at the political news outlet, wrote in her application that Politico's newsroom "lacked the diversity necessary to reduce bias and improve our content." She described a "holistic" hiring process that de‑emphasized grades and relied on an editing test supplemented by an assessment of candidates' broader experiences. By the end of her tenure, she claimed the newsroom's composition shifted from a single person of color to half of new hires coming from underrepresented backgrounds.
The California Law Review, the flagship journal of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, selects eight editors each year to serve on its admissions committee. Those editors evaluate every applicant who passes an initial editing test. The personal‑statement prompt, which accounts for thirty percent of an applicant's overall score, asks candidates to explain how "your background, life or work experiences, culture, or perspectives would contribute to the diversity" of the journal.
According to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, the committee's internal guidelines encourage members to "uplift Native voices," weigh "diverse life experience" against "technical editing abilities," and "integrate anti‑racist sentiment" into the selection process. The same files show that the personal statement often becomes the decisive factor, even though it is formally a minority component of the scoring rubric.
One former committee applicant, Clemencia Garcia‑Kasimirowski, wrote in her 2024 submission that she was "very passionate about being part of the Holistic Review Committee because it shows that CLR is committed to approaching an inequitable process through an equitable lens." She added that a "more diverse group of students in the CLR room makes us better, both substantively and through community." Garcia‑Kasimirowski also argued that "standardized testing … was created by a eugenicist" and that "large lectures … have been proven to disadvantage people of color."
Other candidates expressed similar motivations. Mackenzie Gettel, now an associate at Jenner & Block, said the committee would "enhance my ability to uplift Native women whose voices are otherwise silenced by the inaccessibility of the law." Isabel Cooper pledged to ensure that "students like the girl from my tribe can look to law review journals and feel represented." Both were elected to the committee, which consists of four ex officio members, the editor‑in‑chief, managing editor and two diversity editors, plus the eight elected members.
In a 2025 application, Shree Mehrotra highlighted "advancing the careers of marginalized students" as a major contribution of the journal, while Shahmeer Ahmad wrote that he "does not really care about evaluating applicants based on their technical skills." Georgiana Soo, a podcast editor, argued that "while some people might not excel in the technical aspects of editing, their stories and perspectives might be their most valuable contribution to this journal." It is unclear whether Soo ultimately secured a committee seat.
The California Law Review's emphasis on personal statements distinguishes it from most other law reviews, which typically factor first‑year grades heavily into admissions decisions. By design, the journal's "holistic review process … ensures that CLR upholds the values of diversity, equity and inclusion throughout our membership and scholarship," according to its website.
Berkeley's law school, ranked sixteenth nationally by U.S. News & World Report, operates under California's public‑university statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race. The law review, however, is an independent student‑run entity that includes two law‑school professors, Saira Mohamed and José Argueta Funes, on its board of directors, as well as a dedicated administrator from the university library. None of these officials responded to requests for comment about oversight of the admissions process.
The journal's approach mirrors a broader trend among elite law reviews. In 2021, the Harvard Law Review announced a "holistic review committee" that placed "underrepresented groups" as its "first priority," and the Trump administration launched investigations into Duke Law Journal and Harvard Law Review after reports that personal‑statement scores were being used to award extra points for race and gender disclosures. Those probes highlighted the tension between university policies that ban explicit racial preferences and the desire of student publications to diversify their ranks.
Legal scholars note that the Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race‑based admissions at most private colleges, does not directly bind public‑university law reviews. Nevertheless, the ruling has prompted many public institutions to reassess any practices that could be construed as racial preferences. Critics argue that the California Law Review's reliance on self‑identified background information skirts the line of prohibited discrimination, while supporters contend that the process merely evaluates the perspectives applicants would bring to scholarly discourse.
For American readers, the debate touches on the future of affirmative‑action‑style policies in higher education and professional training. If law reviews continue to prioritize lived experience over traditional editing metrics, the composition of future legal scholars and practitioners could shift, potentially influencing the arguments presented before courts and the policy positions advocated by alumni.
Canadian law schools face a parallel conversation. While Canadian universities are not bound by the same Supreme Court precedent, many institutions have adopted "equity‑focused" admissions for professional programs. The California Law Review's model offers a case study for Canadian law journals that grapple with how to balance merit‑based selection with commitments to Indigenous and racialized representation.
Looking ahead, the California Law Review will hold its next orientation in September, during which incoming editors are required to read "Imperial Identities: Reproductions of Whiteness at the California Law Review," an article by critical theorist Donna Maeda. The piece argues that "assumptions about neutrality … universalize whiteness" and calls for readers to process its "heavy" content. Editor‑in‑chief Deksyos Damtew emphasized that the reading is intended to frame discussions about the journal's culture and values.
The outcome of this internal debate may have practical implications for law‑review applicants across the country. As more journals experiment with holistic criteria, prospective editors will need to craft personal statements that speak to their identity and perspective as much as, if not more than, their technical editing prowess. Whether that shift will stand up to legal scrutiny or reshape the culture of legal scholarship remains an open question.