[Kevin Curry]

Justice O'Connor really showed her activist bent with this ruling. Couldn't this 25 year sunset . . . ,

No SCOTUS decision has the power to automatically "off" itself after 25 years. O'Connor was expressing a breezy personal opinion and desire--not invoking a sunset provision.

Yet Congressman Billybob's analysis makes it sound as if the "25-year and out" thing is a done-deal. He knows better. I suspect it was just sloppy writing on his part.

All the undergraduate decision did was force admissions committees to be more subtle in carrying out their racist policies in the future. Hard quotas and race-based points are out. Now they will simply reach the same result through a process of zen-like touchy-feely subjective analysis in which certain racial characterisitics will override objective factors.

Why will they do this? Becuase admissions committees are unabashedly liberal and believe fully in affirmative action. They will warp and twist the decision to keep affirmative action the focus of how they do their work.

[Lancey Howard]

You know what the real irony is?
Anybody who wants a good lawyer will look for a white male lawyer because it will be understood that the white male lawyer had a more difficult path to getting his degree. And just like it will be natural to presume that a black lawyer can't be any good (coddled all the way through, etc.) it will conversely be presumed that a white male lawyer MUST be good. This will result in a greater demand for white lawyers.

So naturally, government will have to step in and tell people who they must hire when they want a lawyer.

Some of these dottering old fools on the Supreme Court have to start retiring. Soon.

[Congressman Billybob]

No, it was not "sloppy writing" on my part. Supreme Court cases prior to this one have ruled that special remedies like this MUST have a deadline to close out. In order to rely on those cases, Justice O'Connor was required to apply a sunset term to this remedy at Michigan Law School.

She gritted her teeth. She was ambiguous in her language. But that does not change the prior cases. A deadline must be there, and 25 years is the maximum deadline ever used. Those prior cases appear at the end of her Opinion in the Grutter case.

I thoroughly agree that this position makes no logical sense. It's saying, "This is unconstitutional, but not yet." It's like a jury in a criminal case coming in with the vrdict, "Not guilty, but don't do it again." But, as I said, it adds up to the end of affirmative action.

Billybob