While there has been much debate over the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the use of affirmative action in schools, many believe that it won’t change the goals many institutions have of achieving race-based outcomes.
Richard Lempert, who helped draft a university affirmative action policy that the Supreme Court upheld 20 years ago, agrees.
After the Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, where racial quotas were ruled impermissible but affirmative action was upheld, the University of Michigan set out to draft an affirmative action policy for its admissions process. The ruling motivated the school to seek social justice as well as promote racial diversity, according to Richard Lempert, who chaired the committee at University of Michigan Law School that wrote the policy….