I’m delighted to report that my colleague Rick Sander will be guest-blogging in the coming days, starting tomorrow, about recent developments related to race-based affirmative action. Among other recent work, Rick co-authored a widely discussed amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Fisher v. University of Texas; the Court has since granted cert, and will revisit the issue of higher education preferences for the first time since Grutter and Gratz.
Rick has also been the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking a database from the State Bar of California; experts on both sides of the affirmative action debate agree that the California Bar data would provide uniquely powerful tests of Rick’s “mismatch” hypothesis. He and his co-plaintiffs won before the California Court of Appeals last summer; a petition for review in that case is now pending before the California Supreme Court. I much look forward to Rick’s posts.