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Columbia Law School

Education Law

Columbia Law Review

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Perpetual Evolution: A School's-Focused Public Law Litigation Model For Our Day, James S. Liebman Jan 2017

Perpetual Evolution: A School's-Focused Public Law Litigation Model For Our Day, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

In celebrating the monumental accomplishments of the new form of public law litigation that Constance Baker Motley and her colleagues pioneered, this Essay reinterprets their paradigm-shifting body of work in a manner that obliges the current generation of civil rights advocates to change direction. In the hopes of reengaging the affirmative force of constitutional litigation after decades in which it has waned, this Essay argues that the central lesson to be derived from Motley’s generation lies not in the mode of public law litigation it pioneered but in the design of that litigation in the image of the dominant form …


A Comment On Grutter And Gratz V. Bollinger, Lee C. Bollinger Jan 2003

A Comment On Grutter And Gratz V. Bollinger, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

Now that the Supreme Court has definitively resolved (at least for a generation) the issue of the constitutionality of affirmative action in American higher education, thereby continuing without major adjustment what has been the practice in our selective colleges and universities for more or less the last thirty years, it is easy to forget how different the United States would have looked in the years ahead if only one vote had shifted to the dissenting side. Just how precipitous and long-lasting the decline in racial and ethnic diversity would have been is a complicated matter, but that it would have …


Judicial Scrutiny Of "Benign" Racial Preference In Law School Admissions, Kent Greenawalt Jan 1975

Judicial Scrutiny Of "Benign" Racial Preference In Law School Admissions, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Racial preferences for blacks generate ambivalence in those who care about racial equality and also believe that individuals should be judged "on their own merits." This ambivalence is reflected in divergent "equal protection" values, the value of eliminating barriers to equality imposed on minority groups and that of distributing the burdens and benefits of social life without reference to arbitrary distinctions. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that after Marco DeFunis, Jr. challenged the constitutionality of racial preferences for admission to a state law school, the Supreme Court's resolution of the issue was awaited with intense interest and some trepidation. For …