To hear ABA officials tell it, all the ABA's accreditation officials are looking for with regard to law school equal opportunity and diversity is a good faith effort. And the ABA, according to them, never abuses its power by threatening to deny accreditation to a law school simply because it hasn't met some arbitrary goal, much less quota.

This is widely known to be balderdash in the legal academy, but it's hard to get information on specific instances, because no one likes to admit that his school has been in trouble with the ABA. Occasionally, however, a story seeps out. Here's David Barnhizer, law professor at Cleveland State, discussing a school at which he was a dean candidate:

Two main criticisms were voiced as serious concerns by the AALS/ABA report to the extent that immediate action was needed to avoid a negative final accreditation report. One criticism was that of twenty-three faculty members, only eight were women. It was expected that something must be done immediately to fix this problem. I had several problems with this particular situation and none of them related to the issue of women law faculty. One problem was the fact that the school had added women to a previously largely male faculty at a substantial pace. Since 1983, eighteen faculty members had been hired with ten being men and eight women. While perhaps it could have been ten women and eight men, it still seemed to me the school should be commended for its commitment rather than condemned and threatened.

David Barnhizer, A Chilling of Discourse, 50 St. Louis U. L.J. 361 (2006).