eyes left

By Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J. ( articles ) | May 05, 2003

Prof. Ronald Dworkin has an article in the New York Review of Books on the U. of Michigan affirmative action case before the Supreme Court that is curiously bashful of legal argument but full of heavy breathing on the political consequences. Right-thinking journalists and (law review editors) now have their marching orders.

But if the Court were to hold the law school program unconstitutional as well, that might well mean the end of effective affirmative action programs in American colleges and universities, and markedly fewer blacks and other minorities in positions of prestige and influence in the US. If so, the decision would prove to be among the most unfortunate and costly the Supreme Court has ever made.