The Supreme Court seems ready to toss out affirmative action
Race-conscious admissions policies have vocal but dwindling support
“FIVE VOTES”, Justice William Brennan perennially told his law clerks, “can do anything around here.” When the Supreme Court first blessed limited racial preferences in university admissions in 1978, the margin was 5-4. In Grutter v Bollinger, decided in 2003, the same count upheld the University of Michigan law school’s admissions policy seeking a “critical mass” of under-represented minority applicants. In 2016, another one-vote margin salvaged affirmative action in Fisher v University of Texas.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Off colour”
United States November 5th 2022
- Spending in America’s midterms is breaking records
- The life and death of California Republicanism
- The Supreme Court seems ready to toss out affirmative action
- How affirmative action works in practice
- Obamacare’s slow victory
- Are Democrats’ chances being underplayed?
- What Democrats can learn from the midterm campaigns
From the November 5th 2022 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from United States
The beginning of the end of the Trump era
The new president is more confident, and radical, than ever—and also more accepted
Pam Bondi seems like a relatively safe pair of hands
But is America’s next attorney-general an independent operator?
Checks and Balance newsletter: Joe Biden’s farewell shot at the oligarchy
The outgoing president warns of a new “tech-industrial complex”
A protest against America’s TikTok ban is mired in contradiction
Another Chinese app is not the alternative some young Americans think it is
Joe Biden wound up serving Donald Trump
In some ways, his administration will look less like an interregnum than like MAGA-lite
How bad will the smoke be for Angelenos’ health?
Expect more sickness and disrupted schooling