Harvard Chapter Hosts Meeting Of Black Law Students' Group

The regional chapters of the country's largest black law students' organization met at Harvard this weekend and heard, among other things, a call to help prepare friend-of-the-court briefs in a controversial affirmative action case now under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court.

An appeal went out to the group's members to help research briefs for Bakke v. Board of Regents, a case that calls into question admissions quotas for disadvantaged minority students at the University of California at Davis Medical School, Theodore R. Laster, president of the Harvard chapter of the Black Law Students Association, said yesterday.

The impetus for the request came from Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel for the University, who will write a friend-of-the-court brief on Harvard's behalf, Laster said, and the Harvard chapter encouraged the idea by conducting a Saturday workshop on the Bakke case.

Affordable Ball

In the three-day conference's featured speech Saturday, Bruce Wright, a black judge, spoke to the group about problems he has run into with the New York State judiciary as a result of his attempts to set bail that defendants can afford, rather than asking sums that would force them to stay in prison.

"Wright stressed that although blacks should keep trying to establish respectability, they should never forget whence they came," Laster said.