Why Affirmative Action Should Not Be Categorically Eliminated
By To expand on one of the points I make there, the litigants have adopted the “grand bargain” justification for ending affirmative action — i.e. that schools who can’t consider race at all will attempt to achieve diversity through such means as eliminating legacy admissions and increasing scholarships to poorer students. The problem, as with most “grand bargains,” is that eliminating affirmative action will not in fact compel most universities to eliminate legacy admissions or increase need-based aid (and, indeed, most will not have the resources to do so.)
And even if I thought the policy arguments were more credible, I just don’t believe that either the Fourteenth Amendment or the Civil Rights Act makes affirmative action the equivalent of racial classifications intended to uphold a caste system.