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SJ Quinney College of Law, University of Utah

Utah Law Review

Civil Rights and Discrimination

Affirmative Action

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Hidden In Plain Sight: A More Compelling Case For Diversity, Jonathan P. Feingold Mar 2019

Hidden In Plain Sight: A More Compelling Case For Diversity, Jonathan P. Feingold

Utah Law Review

For four decades, the diversity rationale has offered a lifeline to affirmative action in higher education. Yet even after forty years, this critical feature of equal protection doctrine remains constitutionally insecure and politically fraught. Legal challenges persist, the Justice Department has launched a new assault on affirmative action, and a rightward shift on the Supreme Court could usher in an era of increased hostility toward the concept of diversity itself. The future of race-conscious admissions may hang in the balance.

In this Article, I contend that the diversity rationale’s present fragility rests, in part, on its defenders’ failure to center …


Qualitative Diversity: Affirmative Action’S New Reframe, Eang L. Ngov Jun 2017

Qualitative Diversity: Affirmative Action’S New Reframe, Eang L. Ngov

Utah Law Review

How is diversity measured? When is diversity sufficient? The Supreme Court has pressed these hard questions in affirmative action cases. With respect to college admissions, although a university campus might have a diverse student body, universities are beginning to justify the continuation of race-based affirmative action programs on the need for qualitative diversity, i.e., intraracial diversity—diversity within diversity.

In the Court’s most recent affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the university advanced two novel diversity arguments, never before employed in affirmative action cases, to justify its race-based admissions policy: there is a lack of diversity within …