Several varieties thereof…
- The obvious variety is the potentially endangered college (and grad/professional school) legacy admission system. To which I would say "good riddance, you entitled arrogant shitheads!" I didn't run into problems with them during my undergraduate years. But on active duty, there were all of those multi-generation military academy graduates; and the less said about others, the better.
Of course, the problem with "legacy admissions" is slightly broader than the article, or even the term, usually encompasses. "Major donors" is an obvious example; so is "child of the rich and/or famous and/or shameless." Not to mention nepo babies. Gee, you think we'd all be better off just evaluating individuals on their own merits and potential or something radical like that?
- That's a little lighter, a little less consequential, than certain other "legacy admissions," like Alabama's "legacy admissions" of Lost Cause nutjobs to its legislature. And this is interesting in another fashion: Due to the legacy of racist mishandling of "at-large" districts, we've got this concern about district boundaries in the first place. In theory an at-large election for seven Congresscritters could be conducted to enable the Black population to elect — over time and without regard to candidate suitability — a proportional number of Congresscritters. But we have, umm, a legacy of both mishandling at-large elections (procedurally and substantively) and of excessive localism in a national legislature…
- On a more abstruse level, consider problems with literary legacies presented by the ignorant, and the rapaciously venal, and the victims of (multiple levels of) inadequate legal counsel. This area is sort of the opposite of the first link sausage on this platter: It's about the things that don't happen more than about those that do. That, however, is very much part of the process-versus-product problem that the law and general conversation both evade at every opportunity — intentionally or otherwise.