Law Commons^™

Stepping Through Grutter'S Open Doors: What The University Of Michigan Affirmative Action Cases Mean For Race-Conscious Government Decisionmaking, Helen L. Norton

Faculty Scholarship

In Grutter, a majority of the Court for the first time identified an instrumental justification for race-based government decisionmaking as compelling -- specifically, a public law school’s interest in attaining a diverse student body. Grutter not only recognized the value of diversity in higher education, but left open the possibility that the Court might find similar justifications compelling as well. The switch to instrumental justifications for affirmative action appears a strategic response to the Court’s narrowing of the availability of remedial rationales. A number of thoughtful commentators, however, have reacted to this trend with concern and even dismay, questioning whether …

Are Filipina/Os Asians Or Latina/Os?: Reclaiming The Anti-Subordination Objective Of Equal Protection After Grutter And Gratz, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

In this piece, I explore two avenues of political action - self-identification for affirmative action purposes and longer-term solutions to educational inequity - in an attempt to develop a coherent and effective post-Grutter and Gratz strategy for promoting equal educational opportunities consistent with the demands of equal protection. I use the experiences of Filipina/o-Americans as a vehicle for exploring these issues. I hope to show that diversity as the underlying goal of affirmative action fails to capture the core of modern equal protection jurisprudence implicit in Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia: that treating all …

Stepping Through Grutter's Open Doors: What The University Of Michigan Affirmative Action Cases Mean For Race-Conscious Government Decisionmaking, Helen Norton

Publications

In Grutter, a majority of the Court for the first time identified an instrumental justification for race-based government decisionmaking as compelling - specifically, a public law school's interest in attaining a diverse student body. Grutter not only recognized the value of diversity in higher education, but left open the possibility that the Court might find similar justifications compelling as well.

The switch to instrumental justifications for affirmative action appears a strategic response to the Court's narrowing of the availability of remedial rationales. A number of thoughtful commentators, however, have reacted to this trend with concern and even dismay, questioning …

Justice Scalia's Constitution--And Ours, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

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