yay, kind of.
the supreme court today held the university of michigan law school's affirmative action program constitutional while finding umich's undergraduate points system unconstitutional. it's an incomplete victory, but a victory nonetheless, especially considering the extent to which the court could have bungled this one. at the very least, the court stuck fast to the always-contested _bakke_ holding that diversity is a compelling state interest. o'connor's opinion (which is linked from the main times page) gave me flashbacks to discussions of cass sunstein and "judicial minimalism" in con law -- it doesn't do anything new, and it's really REALLY respectful of precedent (even that shaky powell opinion).
the holding in the undergraduate case is more dubious...if they're allowed to award fixed numbers of points to athletes and legacies, why not, in such an unfathomably large process, for racial diversity?
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by day a political scientist! by night a significantly less intellectually responsible political scientist!
amelia.hoover@[university].edu
welcome to my blog. i'm a ph.d. candidate in political science at yale, a native midwesterner, and a happy californian. right now my research is about armed organizations and how they organize their violence against noncombatants, or fail to. i'm also interested in intentional community, gender in the academy, grad school pedagogy, fat politics, the religious left, my partner, our local farmers' market and idiosyncratic capitalization practices.