Sandra Day O’Connor and race-based college admissions

In a 2003 ruling, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor suggested that using race as a factor in college admissions decisions might make sense only for a limited period of time. Now retired, O’Connor just published an essay with Cornell Law School Dean Stewart J. Schwab on the prospects for revisiting the need for race-conscious admissions policies at U.S. colleges (see The Next 25 Years: Affirmative Action in Higher Education in the United States and South Africa). In the essay, O’Connor and Schwab made a chilling statement about the role of the high court:

“When the time comes to reassess the constitutionality of considering race in higher-education admissions, we will need social scientists to clearly demonstrate the educational benefits of diverse student bodies, and to better understand the links between role models in one generation and aspirations and achievements of succeeding generations.”

Justice O’Connor, please tell me what social science research has to do with the constitutionality of anything? Using race as a factor in college admissions decisions is either constitutional or it’s not. Does this mean that gun control is constitutional if a group of social scientists suggest that such a policy might reduce crime? Should freedom of the press be curtailed if social scientists suggest that doing so might result in a more orderly society? A law or practice is constitutional if it is consistent with the original intent of the document itself. Neither public opinion nor current research should be a judicial consideration.

Unfortunately, O’Connor’s thinking is commonplace among activist judges. To them, assessing the constitutionality of a law or practice doesn’t really involve the Constitution at all. It’s all about what seems to make sense at the moment.

One thought on “Sandra Day O’Connor and race-based college admissions

  1. well, you are a Professor in college so you can tell us if qualified people are being enrolled these days…all i do is look to gov’t and see imbeciles such as janet incompetano and the new nominee for head of TSA, who blurted out this gem the other day:

    “Due to connectivity that we have with countries such as Israel, France — countries that are seen by groups, by Al Qaeda, as infidels or anti-Islamic — by the true nature of our alliance with them means we are subject to being attacked as well,” Errol Southers said in an interview with the online publication VideoJug.

    seems like these idiots go from favoritism getting them into college to favoritism getting them jobs in gov’t because they too damn stooopid to get a job in the private sector…

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