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Roberts's Revisions: A Narratological Reading Of The Affirmative Action Cases, Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Roberts's Revisions: A Narratological Reading Of The Affirmative Action Cases, Angela Onwuachi-Willig
Faculty Scholarship
In a seminal article published nearly twenty years ago in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, Professor Peter Brooks posed a critical yet underexplored question: "Does the [flaw [n]eed a [n]arratology?"5 In essence, he asked whether law as a field should have a framework for deconstructing and understanding how and why a legal opinion, including the events that the opinion is centered on, has been crafted and presented in a particular way.6 After highlighting that "how a story is told can make a difference in legal outcomes," Brooks encouraged legal actors to "talk narrative talk" …
Ambivalent Advocates: Why Elite Universities Compromised The Case For Affirmative Action, Jonathan Feingold
Ambivalent Advocates: Why Elite Universities Compromised The Case For Affirmative Action, Jonathan Feingold
Faculty Scholarship
“The end of affirmative action.” The headline is near. When it arrives, scholars will explain that a controversial set of policies could not withstand unfriendly doctrine and less friendly Justices. This story is not wrong. But it is incomplete. Critically, this account masks an underappreciated source of affirmative action’s enduring instability: elite universities, affirmative action’s formal champions, have always been ambivalent advocates.
Elite universities are uniquely positioned to shape legal and lay opinions about affirmative action. They are formal defendants in affirmative action litigation and objects of public obsession. And yet, schools like Harvard and the University of North Carolina—embroiled …