Split Decision, Clear Result (the Michigan SC cases)

United Press International ^ | 23 June 2003 | John Armor

[proud American in Canada]

bump (please put me on your ping list if you have one)..

thanks for an (as usual) excellent insight. :)

[Reagan Man]

Good article John. Thanks for posting it.

I thought Jonathan Turley, Ward Connerly and Fox News' own Andrew Napolitano had some of the best comments on todays SC decision.

Connerly said that "subjective judgement" is okay, but the Gratz v Bollinger decision would "tighten the noose on race preferences".

Turley said he thought that the pro-AA side shoudln't be "jumping for joy". The slim 5-4 victory could be overturned with a political change in the court.

Napalitano nailed it all the way, calling the Grutter v Bollinger decision for what it was. "Racism".

[proud American in Canada]

"P.S. I read all 13 of the opinions in both cases, before I went on radio to talk about them, and before I wrote the UPI article. I've got hard reasons, not guesswork, for what I wrote about this pair of decisions."

A welcome voice of sanity in this debate. :)

Yes people, it might help to read the decisions before posting. :)

I know I've posted on these threads, but not substantively. Not until I read them.

[Ken H]

And even if we are diverse enough in 25 years, there's nothing in this opinion that prevents another compelling government interest from being tarted up as justification for discrimination.

I agree.

How can anyone be confident this Court will not allow preferential treatment based on sexual orientation or religion if such treatment promotes diversity?

[Reagan Man]

>>>Brit was the first newsperson to mention that this "win" for affirmative action in the law school had a sunset provision to drop out at 25 years.

To be fair, Major Garret was the first to mention the 25 year provision soon after the decision came down.

[visualops]

And so it begins again.

"It's simply unhealthy for a whole class to be admitted on one criteria," Faulkner said.

Does he mean that one criteria that sees no age, no money, no race and no gender: academic achievement?

What will they do about the less than stellar student from a poor white neighborhood? Sorry, you don't have the right kind of "disadvantage"? Sorry, you're not "diverse" enough?

[votelife]

remember the media thought the Supreme Court ruled FOR Gore at first...

[reed_inthe_wind]

According to the Supreme Court, students learn as much from each other than they do from their Professors. What's wrong with the Professors?

Has anyone measured what students learn from each other? Is the transmission of knowledge from student to student maximized when the ability of some of the students is reduced by a racial selection process? If I brought my Grandmother to class would my fellow students learn still more? Are white people so homogenous, that only a minority student adds to the diversity? Is the Court relying on myth and superficiality to underpin their arguments?

I am not trying to hurt other people- but I would like my children to have a fair chance. Why isn't the court compelled to uphold the 14th amendment?

[Steve Eisenberg]

However, for law school applicants the advantage was individually considered. For example, a child of Cliff and Clair Huxtable (the Cosby family on TV), would get no advantage – that child of a doctor and a lawyer, attending good schools in good neighborhoods, would be expected to perform at the same level as any Caucasian or Asian American student.

I read the decision and did not get this out of it at all. Fact is, all the schools have to do is to say that they pattern their system on that of either Michigan Law or Amherst (latter made clear in Kennedy's non-dissent law school dissent), and any case against such a school will lose at the appeals court level and never recieve Supreme Court review.

Affirmative action practioners always favor the Huxtable types because they are less likely to flunk out. Affirmative action to favor ghetto blacks over those from the suburbs was tried for a few years at the start of AA, but was dropped because of the disasterous flunkout rates. Thomas was right in his dissent to emphasize the elitism of the majority law decision.

[okie01]

"Diversity is in the unique soul and spirit of each person. Why is this always based on race?"

To the liberals in acadaemia, "diversity" is achieved when everybody in the student body looks different...and thinks exactly alike.

Credit: Thomas Sowell

[LWalk18]

Affirmative action practioners always favor the Huxtable types because they are less likely to flunk out. Huxtable types are also more likely to be able to pay most, if not all the tuition that elite schools charges, while letting in poor inner-city blacks means paying full freight for each one.

[rdb3]

*

[hoosiermama]

Thanks for your opinion. I was wondering what you thought when I heard a decision had been made.

[calebcar]

I was upset and felt betrayed at first. On second thought I think this is not so bad. First the ruling... utter gobbledygook deliberately constructed to continue the legal confusion so as to give those with the power to do so the legal excuse to continue AA.Parsing leftist logic is a waste of time.

I think this ruling is the political equivalent of the Jeffords party change in the last election. A betrayal which awakens and energizes us. The left had their Florida. Anyone who desires equal treatment under the law now knows what party they have to work for. The conservatives now have much more energy and the emotional high ground in the supreme court issue in election 2004. These battles are always won and lost on the ground. I was naive to think that this time it would be otherwise .

[garbanzo]

IOW, if we are still not diverse enough in 25 years, the 14th Amendment will just have to wait a little longer.

It waited one hundred years already. The whole reason we have court-enforced affirmative action, and court-approved voting districts and the like is because many governments refused to uphold the Constitution until the courts twisted their arms. Various state and local governments did everything they could to avoid having to give equal rights and the sheer lawlessness of the behavior opened the door to the expansive domain of the federal courts.

So if you're looking to blame someone for overbearing courts - blame the politicos from the 50s and 60s who refused to obey the law.

[mrsmith]

Thanks. This is the most helpful analysis by far.

[ApesForEvolution]

Why not exactly. Thank you.

[ApesForEvolution]

The USSC majority members were taking deep bong hits at Souter's house the night they reached a consensus on the majority opinion?


God knows there's no rhyme nor reason to how the USSC works other than their own personal biases....

[Steve Eisenberg]

For example, a child of Cliff and Clair Huxtable (the Cosby family on TV), would get no advantage – that child of a doctor and a lawyer, attending good schools in good neighborhoods, would be expected to perform at the same level as any Caucasian or Asian American student.

More on this. This majority did say that some blacks with high scores have to be non-admits in order to show that simply being black doesn't get you in. However, they did NOT require that the few high-scoring black non-admits be from stable and affluent families. Instead these high-scoring black non-admits could, and more likely would, be young men and women who rub the admissions people the wrong way. Just guessing, but which political party do you think those kind of rub-the-libs-the-wrong-way high-scoring blacks would be more likely to affiliate with?

Also, Justice Kennedy was on to something when he wrote that some of the liberals don't want Cubans included with Hispanics because Cubans vote GOP. Thus we may see some bright Cuban non-admits who in fact would have been admitted if white!

[Steve Eisenberg]

And if there is even a one-person change in the court’s composition (with one more conservative justice) we could see the end of affirmative action much sooner.

Read Kennedy's non-dissent law school dissent. He is also for AA, but just prefers the Amherst model to that of Michigan law. It would thus take a two justice shift. I'm a pessimist here.