Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Michigan Handicapping Time

The news papes today are awash with imnportant stories about the diversity industry. The Washington Post has a story about "whiteness studies" at Amherst and elsewhere (Hadley--look what’s happened while you were vacationing at Princeton this year!), which are thinly disguised efforts to instill racial guilt in whites. The Post, to its credit, rightly characterizes such programs as "left-leaning.

The Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link--I read the dead tree version) has a front-page story about how UCLA Law School is evading the ban on racial quotas in California by offering admission to applicants with lower grades and test scores than average if they commit to signing up for a program in critical race theory and the law. The program is open to all applicants, but (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) guess who its really intended for?

Which brings us to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Michigan case, due out in the next 10 days or so. NoLeftTurn-ers should now make their predictions on the outcome (Lucas, Ken, and my old roommate the Eastguy should all weigh in, at the very least); let Schramm decide who comes closest and award a coffee mug.

I am pessimistic. Especially if O’Connor is about to retire (the signs are there; lots of her family members have shown up for oral arguments this spring, which looks rather like a valedictory to me), I doubt she will want to go out with the New York Times and other observers saying her departure was "marred" by a "mean-spirited," "right-wing" decision on race. I predict she will reprise the Powell role from Bakke, and give us a Bakke-lite decision that will muddle the waters so badly that the issue will bet set back another 20 years. So she will side with the court’s liberals and write the controlling opinion; saving "affirmative action" from total abolition will be the legacy she seeks.

I’d love to be wrong about this, but there it is.

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