Last week the Supreme Court granted certiorari in two affirmative action cases: Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admission v. University of North Carolina. The “Leading Question” to be answered in the case is: “Should the Supreme Court hold that institutions of higher education cannot use race as a factor in admission?”
The most important consideration about this case is that it reached today’s court after forty-four years of being unconstitutional. That is right! Affirmative action has no place in law. Affirmative Action is a violation of the “equality of all people before the law” which is implied in the foundational document of our nation; the Declaration of Independence.” The Fourteenth Amendment also prohibits Affirmative Action:
“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this Article.”
The rest of this essay informs how the government wasted money trying to maintain an illegal law. The Supreme Court originally confirmed Affirmative Action valid law in a Medical School admissions case at the University of California, affirmed in the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). The law was tested again in the Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and affirmed.
In 1996, the State of California proposed to amend its constitution by barring Berkley Law from granting preferential treatment on the basis of race in the operation of public education. According to Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court continues to be willfully blind to the very real experience in California and elsewhere which raises the inference that institutions with reputations for excellence…have satisfied their sense of mission without resorting to prohibited racial discrimination. Furthermore, this provides an opportunity to cite a useful observation in business administration: “There are no bad solutions, only bad observations and conclusions poorly drawn.” That statement is violated time-after-time by Progressive legislators and, “Affirmative Action”, a progressive law, is an example.
Justice Thomas also leveled another criticism of Justice O’Connor’s Bakke opinion, by placing a remark that the Medical School’s interest in Affirmative Action was to obtain a “critical mass” of minority students, perhaps in another twenty-five years, when Affirmative Action may not be necessary. “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” said Justice O’Connor. Justice Thomas dissented to that also, writing it is “illegal now.” And it will still be illegal 25 years hence.
How can the Congress and the Supreme Court affirmatively make such a blatant error in following the Constitution? The answer is these lines of thought did not originate in America but in Europe. European Law Schools, Political Science and Sociology departments have made a point to teach their students the Constitution of the United States is too individualist, and improperly impedes the will of the people; a construction taught in European Universities since the late 1800s. It spread from Europe to America, and still exists, primarily in elite schools. Bourgeois law schools in America teach better law aimed toward passing the Bar Exams where the French Social Contract is ignored.
Publiustoo.com February 3, 2022
