"'If standards had to be lowered in order to admit racial minorities to this law school in order to achieve diversity, would that be acceptable or not?'" he suggested.

"If that had been asked," Blum said, "then I think the vast majority of law students would say that standards must be applied uniformly and evenly between the races and men and women."

Affirmative action, or the preferential treatment of minorities, was brought to the national spotlight in 1978 when the U.S. Supreme Court, in

Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, ruled that race could be a factor in determining university admissions. At the same time, the Court ordered that Allan Bakke, a white student who felt he was wrongly discriminated against because of minority quotas, be admitted into the medical school at the University of California at Davis.

In 1996, citizens in Texas and California challenged the Bakke decision. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that the University of Texas School of Law's admissions policy wrongly discriminated against white students. And in a referendum in California known as Proposition 209, California citizens voted by a 54 to 46 percent margin in favor of outlawing preferential treatment for any group.

The CCBA sees the Harvard study as another attempt to grab onto the fading strength of the Bakke decision.

"Over the last five years, we have made so much progress," Levin said. "Those on the other side seem to be grabbing for any straw they can."