At the Supreme Court, Odds Lie Against Affirmative Action

If you believe in the value of affirmative action in high academics -- "that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions," to use United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's phrase from the last big case on the topic -- then you should know from the get-go that little good is likely to come from the court's choice Tuesday to add a new school admissions case to its docket for consideration next fall, right around the presidential election.

Instead, the best you can reasonably hope for in Fisher v. University of Texas is that the court will produce a narrow, fact-driven decision that does no more than strike down UT's admissions policy because it goes beyond where Justice O'Connor said such academic policies could go when she wrote the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger. That's the 2003 affirmative action case out of the University of Michigan Law School, decided by a 5-4 vote, which stands as the controlling legal precedent here.

Here's how Scotusblog's Lyle Denniston explains how such a result might be justified. 

Read here...