Law Commons^™

Memories Of An Affirmative Action Activist, Margaret E. Montoya

Seattle University Law Review

Some twenty-five years ago, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) led a march supporting Affirmative Action in legal education to counter the spate of litigation and other legal prohibitions that exploded during the 1990s, seeking to limit or abolish race-based measures. The march began at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel, where the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was having its annual meeting, and proceeded to Union Square. We, the organizers of the march, did not expect the march to become an iconic event; one that would be remembered as a harbinger of a new era of activism by …

After Affirmative Action, Meera E. Deo

Seattle University Law Review

This is a time of crisis in legal education. In truth, we are in the midst of several crises. We are emerging from the COVID pandemic, a period of unprecedented upheaval where law students and law faculty alike struggled through physical challenges, mental health burdens, and decreased academic and professional success. The past few years also have seen a precipitous drop in applications to and enrollment in legal education. Simultaneously, students have been burdened with the skyrocketing costs of attending law school, taking on unmanageable levels of debt. And with the Supreme Court decision in SFFA v. Harvard, we are …

Students For Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action And Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity?, Steven A. Ramirez

Seattle University Law Review

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater …

Sffa V. Harvard College: Closing The Doors Of Equality In Education, Ediberto Roman

Seattle University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s recent combined decision ending affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina was hailed in conservative circles as the beginning of “the long road” towards racial equality. Others declared that “the opinion may begin the restoration of our nation’s constitutional colorblind legal covenant.” Another writer pronounced, “Affirmative action perpetuated racial discrimination. Its end is a huge step forward.” A Washington-based opinion page even declared: “[T]he demise of race-based affirmative action should inspire renewed commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity in America.” Despite …

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

The Sffa V. Harvard Trojan Horse Admissions Lawsuit, Kimberly West-Faulcon

Seattle University Law Review

Affirmative-action-hostile admissions lawsuits are modern Trojan horses. The SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case—Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, et. al., decided jointly—is the most effective Trojan horse admissions lawsuit to date. Constructed to have the distractingly appealing exterior façade of a lawsuit seeking greater fairness in college admissions, the SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case is best understood as a deception-driven battle tactic used by forces waging a multi-decade war against the major legislative victories of America’s Civil Rights Movement, specifically Title VI and Title VII …

Racial Indirection, Yuvraj Joshi

Yuvraj Joshi

Acting White? Or Acting Affluent? A Book Review Of Acting White? Rethinking Race In "Post-Racial" America, Lisa Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

Acting White? Rethinking Race in “Post-Racial” America (2013) is the latest installment in Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati’s decade-plus collaboration regarding issues of race and employment. This review lauds the book’s comprehensive treatment of the double bind that racial minorities—especially blacks—experience within principally white institutions. In this volume, the authors expand on their prior employment-centered work to consider, for example, Barack and Michelle Obama’s presence on the national political stage, racial identity and performance in the context of higher education admissions, and racial profiling by law enforcement. With a focus on intra-racial diversity, Carbado and Gulati begin to gesture to …

The False Choice Between Race And Class And Other Affirmative Action Myths, Lisa R. Pruitt

Lisa R Pruitt

This article refutes the widely held assumption that affirmative action is appropriate either to support only racial and ethnic minorities or to support only low-income students, but that it cannot or should not support both. Pruitt argues that we need not make such a choice and that we should aspire to socioeconomically diversify higher education institutions—including the most elite sector—with low-income students of all colors. Pruitt thus disputes the framing of Richard Kahlenberg and Richard Sander who have long argued that we should seek socioeconomic diversity in lieu of racial/ethnic diversity, a stance that has needlessly pitted underrepresented minorities against …

For Health's Sake Be Not Colorblind, Ruth Hackford-Peer

Ruth Hackford-Peer

The United States’ past ideology of overt state-sanctioned racism has been replaced by a covert, seemingly race-neutral ideology. This Article looks at the history of racism in the United States and traces the recent shift in ideology and discourse about race, positing that the discourse of “colorblindness” powerfully maintains the racial status quo while purporting to advance race neutrality. Then, using affirmative action as the lens from which to view these shifts in ideology and discourse, this Article analyzes racial disparities in health and healthcare. It highlights some of the health consequences people of color face because they live a …

Suspect Classification And Its Discontents, Susannah W. Pollvogt

Susannah W Pollvogt

Suspect classification analysis and the associated tiers of scrutiny framework are the primary doctrinal features of contemporary equal protection jurisprudence. How plaintiffs fare under these twin doctrines determines the ultimate fate of their equal protection claims. But neither doctrine finds firm footing in precedent or theory. Rather, a close examination of the United States Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence reveals these doctrines as historically contingent and lacking in any principled justification. But rather than disregard the contributions of these cases altogether, this Article mines that same body of law not for the discrete doctrinal mechanisms developed in each case, but …

When Will Black Women Lawyers Slay The Two-Headed Dragon: Racism And Gender Bias, Wilma Williams Pinder

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Willful [Color-] Blindness: The Supreme Court's Equal Protection Of Ascription, Aaron J. Shuler

Aaron J Shuler

Rogers Smith in his "Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America," warns of novel legal systems reconstituting ascriptive American inequality. The post-Warren Courts' approach to Equal Protection, specifically their unwillingness to consider disparate impact and the difference between invidious and benign practices, betrays an "ironic innocence" as described by James Baldwin to a history of racial discrimination and domination, and a disavowal of a hiearchy that the Court perpetuates.

After The Gold Rush?: Grutter, Sander And ‘Affirmative Action’ “On The Run…” In The Twenty-First Century, Anthony Vincent Baker

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Who’S In And Who’S Out? Can India’S Answer Help Us Determine Who Qualifies For Affirmative Action? , Sean A. Pager

ExpressO

Who should be the beneficiaries of racially targeted affirmative action? In its Croson decision, the Supreme Court answered part of the “Who Question” when it conditioned affirmative action eligibility on underrepresentation. What the Court did not tell us was underrepresentation of whom? The Court thus instructs us to select beneficiary groups by counting heads, but leaves open which heads get counted where and what categories to use.

By artificially separating what are necessarily related inquiries, the Court left a definitional lacuna that lower courts have struggled to fill. Such definitional issues matter because they often determine who benefits from affirmative …

Expert Report Of Thomas J. Sugrue, Thomas J. Sugrue

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the end of the twentieth century, the United States is a remarkably diverse society. It grows more diverse by the day, transformed by an enormous influx of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. In an increasingly global economy, Americans are coming into contact with others of different cultures to an extent seen only in times of world war. Yet amidst this diversity remains great division. When the young black academic W.E.B. DuBois looked out onto America in 1903, he memorably proclaimed that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Over …

Expert Report Of Eric Foner, Eric Foner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Race has been a crucial line of division in American society since the settlement of the American colonies in the beginning of the 17th century. It remains so today. While the American understanding of the concept of "race" has changed over time, the history of African-Americans provides a useful template for understanding the history of race relations. The black experience has affected how other racial minorities have been treated in our history, and illuminates the ways in which America's white majority has viewed racial difference.

Expert Report Of Patricia Gurin, Patricia Gurin

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

A racially and ethnically diverse university student body has far-ranging and significant benefits for all students, non-minorities and minorities alike. Students learn better in a diverse educational environment, and they are better prepared to become active participants in our pluralistic, democratic society once they leave such a setting. In fact, patterns of racial segregation and separation historically rooted in our national life can be broken by diversity experiences in higher education. This Report describes the strong evidence supporting these conclusions derived from three parallel empirical analyses of university students, as well as from existing social science theory and research.

Expert Report Of Claude M. Steele, Claude M. Steele

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Report based on 25-year period of research in the areas of social psychology, the social psychology of race and race relations, and the effects of race on standardized test performance.

Expert Report Of Robert B. Webster, Robert B. Webster

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The author’s opinions are based primarily upon knowledge and insight gained in the forty years in which he has been a practicing attorney, counselor, arbitrator, mediator, bar officer, and state court judge. Webster’s opinions are also based in part upon materials described in Section IV.B, within.

Expert Report Of Kinley Larntz, Ph.D., Kinley Larntz

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

While working in this matter, the author undertook the task of analyzing the statistical relationship between law school acceptance and ethnicity. In particular, focusing on the strength of the relationship between law school acceptance and being a member of certain ethnic groups, controlling for qualifications for admission such as undergraduate grade point average, Law School Admission Test score, and selection index, and for other factors such as residency in the State of Michigan, gender, and a measure of economic disadvantage, waiver of the fee for application.

Agency, Equality, And Antidiscrimination Law , Tracy E. Higgins, Laura A. Rosenbury

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court increasingly has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as a mandate for the state to treat citizens as if they were equal-as a limitation on the state's ability to draw distinctions on the basis of characteristics such as race and, to a lesser extent, gender. In the context of race, the Court has struck down not only race-specific policies designed to harm the historically oppressed, but race conscious policies designed to foster racial equality. Although in theory the Court has left open the possibility that benign uses of race may be constitutional under some set of facts, in …

Introduction, Michigan Journal Of Race & Law

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The last Supreme Court decision addressing the use of race in admissions to institutions of higher education, Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, affirmed that the role of diversity in colleges and universities is both essential and compelling. Since Bakke, opponents and proponents have wrestled with ideology and theory, but have never had the benefit of a comprehensive theoretical framework that has been tested by reliable empirical data. The University of Michigan has drawn on several of the nation's leading, and most respected, researchers and scholars, to develop such a framework and verify its legitimacy with …

Expert Report Of Albert M. Camarillo, Albert M. Camarillo

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

At the request of attorneys with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, the author has prepared this report which outlines the historical patterns and legacies of racial isolation and separation of Hispanics in American society. The research is based on archival collections, syntheses of secondary literature, and other primary sources such as U.S. government reports including Bureau of the Census population reports. Based on the author’s knowledge and research, this report outlines the historical developments that resulted in patterns of racial exclusion and isolation of Hispanics in the states and cities where they have settled since 1900. In particular, this report will …

Expert Report Of William G. Bowen, William G. Bowen

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Higher education plays a unique role in our society. The obligation of a university is to the society at large over the long run, and, even more generally, to the pursuit of learning. Although this may seem amorphous, there is no escaping a university's obligation to try to serve the long-term interests of society defined in the broadest and least parochial terms, and to do so through two principal activities: advancing knowledge and educating students who will in turn serve others, within this nation and beyond it, both through their specific vocations and as citizens. Universities therefore are responsible for …

Expert Report Of Kent D. Syverud, Kent D. Syverud

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Expert report from an educator with experience teaching many students in many settings; particular experience teaching the same subject matter to classes that are racially homogenous and racially heterogeneous, and to classes where non-white students make up a tiny fraction of the enrolled students and where their numbers are more significant.

Report On The Consultation With The Maritime School Of Social Work Community, Dianne Pothier

Dianne Pothier Collection

In my assessment there is a genuine and strong commitment to affirmative action and anti-racism at the MSSW. But that in itself is only the beginning. Real cross cultural understanding is a major challenge, and needs to be constantly worked at. In the process, mistakes will be made on all sides. Allowances need to be made for that. The School looks at itself compared to other institutions; critics look at the School compared to an ideal world. Neither perspective holds the complete truth. The MSSW needs to continue to work at the effectiveness of its affirmative action program, defining that …

Maintaining Residential Integration: Municipal Practices And Law, Kermit J. Lind

Kermit J. Lind

Suburban integration following the passage of the Federal Fair Housing Law in 1968 presented an unprecedented challenge to those communities. Residential integration was not the desire of the majority of homeowners then and racial discrimination was deeply imbedded in the business of selling and buying homes. Integration was usually presumed to be the interval between the first black family moving into a neighborhood and the last white family leaving. But not for everyone. Some communities made a determination to embrace and maintain residential integration. Municipal governments were pressed by both their constituents and federal policies tied to federal funds to …