Former VC guest blogger and UCLA law professor Richard Sander is a political liberal who has done some pioneering work on affirmative action mismatch: essentially, if law schools (and other educational institutions) dip too far into the applicant pool to fill their diversity goals, many of the purported beneficiaries of preference policies wind up being […]
Archive | Affirmative Action
Just How Unpopular are Race Preferences in Admissions?
This unpopular: At Brown University, long known for being among the most politically correct universities in the country, and where Obama supporters outnumber Romney supporters by better than 9 to 1, only 35% of students think the university should consider race in student admissions or in faculty hiring. H/T Eric Muller, who provided a link […]
The Military Rationale for Affirmative Action in College Admissions
By Ilya Somin on October 11, 2012 12:40 am in Affirmative Action, Fisher v. University of Texas, War and Armed Conflict
In the recent oral argument in Fisher v. University of Texas, and in his amicus brief on behalf of the United States, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli emphasized the military rationale for affirmative action. Without racial preferences in college admissions, we will not have an adequate supply of minority officers in the armed forces, which would […]
Thoughts on the Oral Argument in Fisher v. University of Texas
By Ilya Somin on October 10, 2012 11:24 pm in Affirmative Action, Fisher v. University of Texas, Standing
Today’s oral argument in Fisher v. University of Texas largely bears out what most observers expected. As Amy Howe explained on SCOTUSblog, the five conservative justices seem inclined to strike down the University of Texas’ affirmative action program, though not to completely overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, which allows the use of racial preferences to promote […]
Here’s Where the University of Texas Loses in Fisher
From the transcript: MR. GARRE: If you look at the admissions data that we cite on page 34 of our brief, it shows the breakdown of applicants under the holistic plan and the percentage plan. And I don’t think it’s been seriously disputed in this case to this point that, although the percentage plan certainly […]
Thoughts on Fisher v. University of Texas
I have little to add to my previously posted on thoughts on Fisher v. University of Texas, the major affirmative action case that the Supreme Court is about to hear. But here are some links to earlier posts on the subject that might interest readers who follow the issue. Here is my initial post about […]
The Novelty of Fisher v. University of Texas
The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in the Fisher v. University of Texas case tomorrow morning, so I thought I would republish here the essay I wrote for Scotusblog a while back: I recently attended a panel discussion on Fisher v. University of Texas at an academic conference. Each panelist began his remarks by […]
Akhil Amar on the Application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Government
I am grateful to Akhil Amar for his comment on my post challenging claims that the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment allows affirmative action because Congress, in the 1860s and 70s adopted programs that gave “racial preferences” to recently freed African-American slaves. In my earlier post, I pointed out that these were federal government […]
Originalism and Affirmative Action
By Ilya Somin on September 7, 2012 11:20 am in Affirmative Action, Constitutional Theory, Fisher v. University of Texas, Originalism
In this recent SCOTUSblog post on the upcoming Supreme Court case of Fisher v. University of Texas, David Gans and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler take conservative originalist opponents of affirmative action to task for ignoring originalism in their arguments against the constitutionality of racial preferences for minorities. They particularly single out Supreme Court Justices […]
Fisher v. Texas and the Future of Affirmative Action
By David Bernstein on September 6, 2012 9:39 pm in Affirmative Action, Fisher v. University of Texas
My contribution to Scotusblog’s symposium on Fisher v. Texas can be found here. An excerpt follows. Public debate over affirmative action revolves almost entirely around the issue of preferences for African Americans. This is not surprising, given that affirmative action was initiated in the 1960s to serve the “compensatory justice” rationale of redressing historical oppression […]
Affirmative Action, Transparency, and Fisher v. Texas
Affirmative action isn’t exactly an issue that brings people together across ideological lines. It’s a divider, not a uniter. But there is considerable cross-ideological agreement on one point: if we are going to have racial preferences for minorities, it’s better to be transparent about it. In the recent SCOTUSblog symposium on the upcoming Fisher v. […]
Do Law Schools Consider Applicants “Holistically”?
By David Bernstein on August 24, 2012 9:05 am in Academia, Affirmative Action, Fisher v. University of Texas, Law Schools
Prof. Mike Dorf has a post at Dorf on Law describing the brief he coauthored on behalf of the Association of American Law School in Fisher v. University of Texas. The gist of the brief is that if the Supreme Court reasons that Texas may not engage in affirmative action preferences because its race-neutral ten-percent […]
The Originalist Case for UT in the Fisher Case Falls Short
By David Bernstein on August 21, 2012 10:34 pm in Affirmative Action, Constitutional History, Fisher v. University of Texas
The Constitutional Accountability Center has filed an interesting amicus brief in the Fisher affirmative action case on behalf of six prominent law professor amici. The brief tries to exploit a weakness in conservative Justices’ affirmative action opinions, which is that these Justices have almost entirely ignored the question of whether an originalist interpretation of the […]
Ethnic Preferences in Contracting for Arab-Americans, and Religious Preferences for Hasidic Jews
A National Review Online article reports on a petition that the federal Minority Business Development Agency is considering. The petition, from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, seeks discrimination in favor of Arab-Americans, in the form of a “formal designation of Arab-Americans as a minority group that is socially or economically disadvantaged pursuant to 15 CFR Part […]
Asian-Americans, Affirmative Action, and Fisher v. Texas
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that several Asian-American groups have filed an amicus brief opposing the University of Texas’ affirmative action program, which is being challenged in Fisher v. Texas, an important affirmative action case before the Supreme Court: A brief filed Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court seeks to shake up the legal […]