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Hopwood, Bakke And The Future Of The Diversity Justification, Lackland H. Bloom Jr.

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The decision of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Hopwood v. Texas sent shock waves through the academic community with its holding that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the University of Texas Law School from taking account of race as a factor in its admissions process. In the course of invalidating certain procedures employed by the law school, the Fifth Circuit concluded that Justice Powell's influential opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which recognized the pursuit of diversity in higher education as a compelling state interest, had never constituted …