SCOTUS grants cert to race-based admissions cases
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@klaus said in SCOTUS grants cert to race-based admissions cases:
OK, but it is in no way predictive for the outcome, right?
No, but it does indicate that they see potential flaws in lower court rulings…
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Not in general, but the granting of cert requires minimum 4 votes.
And race-based admissions are longstanding (~40 yr) precedent.
So if you want to grant cert you almost certainly want to reverse or at least alter precedent.
But to decide the case they need 5 votes. We don't know how many voted to grant cert. I'm guessing 5 or 6. I suspect they have the votes on the court to overturn it outright.
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Yes they can change longstanding precedent but it's not that common.
Re race-based admissions they elide over it with flowery language, just like the Harvard president above. They say "wholistic admissions with race as one factor" instead of the more honest 'we discriminate against individuals on account of their race and ethnicity as a means to an end'.
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@klaus said in SCOTUS grants cert to race-based admissions cases:
So in the past SCOTUS said "Race-based admission is ok" and now they may say "not ok"?
Can the SCOTUS just say "We changed our mind. Instead of X, now "not X" is the law"?
No. They can say X is no longer a correct interpretation of the law or they can say that Law X is not constitutional, but they can’t make Not X law. Though Not X becomes de facto law…
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LD is right, they aren't producing legislation, In some cases they strike it down, or provisions of it down.
In a case like this they would say that the policy violates the 14th amendment (in the case of UNC, a public school) or is contrary to the civil rights act of 1964, which very clearly prohibits discrimination by race (in the case of both schools). SO they would be interpreting the law and the constitution, but as LD noted that becomes de-facto the law of the land.
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Well yes, and thankfully so.
In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that "the black man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect".
In 1897 (IIRC) they ruled that systematic segregation by race was legal under the even-then-obvious fiction, "separate but equal".
So yeah its a good thing that it happens.
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@klaus said in SCOTUS grants cert to race-based admissions cases:
So there is a notion that SCOTUS can have been "wrong"? Case law is confusing...
Personally, I have some moral and ethical problems with case law, but understand that it’s also necessary to some extent to prevent every issue from being tried over and over again…
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@klaus said in SCOTUS grants cert to race-based admissions cases:
So in the past SCOTUS said "Race-based admission is ok" and now they may say "not ok"?
Can the SCOTUS just say "We changed our mind. Instead of X, now "not X" is the law"?
So there is a notion that SCOTUS can have been "wrong"? Case law is confusing...I don't know if SCOTUS ever said RBA is OK. A lower court or a state court might have, which is why some challenges make their way up to SCOTUS for final determination according to the Constitution.
I think that good jurisprudence is very circumspect and parsimonious. Answer the very specific question presented, and don't necessarily extrapolate or color outside the lines. It's for the legislature to define laws if they want to grant or limit rights not otherwise accepted, not for the courts.
So its not necessarily the courts changing their minds, but considering the constitutionality of the argument as it is presented to them.
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@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS grants cert to race-based admissions cases:
Each of us is, however, more than our numbers, more than our grades, more than our rankings or scores.
Yeah, unless you're Asian. Then you're less than your numbers, less than your grades, less than your rankings or scores.
Absolutely.
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