Overview
In the late 1990s, two lawsuits by white applicants who had beenrejected by the University of Michigan began working their waythrough the federal court system, aimed at the abolition of racialpreferences in college admissions. The stakes were high, theconstitutional questions profound, the politics and emotionsexplosive. It was soon evident that the matter was headed for thehighest court in the land, but there all clarity ended.
To the plaintiffs and the feisty public-interest law firm thatbacked them, the suits were a long overdue assault on reversediscrimination. The Constitution, strictly construed, wascolor-blind. Discrimination under any guise was not only illegal,it was the wrong way to set history right in a nation that had beentroubled and divided by the uses and misuses of race for more thantwo hundred years.
To the University of Michigan, and to other top institutionsstriving to expand opportunity and create diverse, representativestudent bodies, it looked as if most of what had been put in placesince the 1978 Bakke v. University of California decisionwas about to be undone. Black and Hispanic students were in dangerof being once again largely shut out of the most important avenueof advancement in America, an elite education. To some, it appearedlikely that racial integration was about to suffer their worstsetback since the start of the civil rights movement.
In A Black and White Case, veteran Supreme Court reporterGreg Stohr portrays the individual dramas and exposes the humanpassions that colored and propelled this momentous legal struggle.His fascinating account takes us deep inside America’s courtsystem, where logic collides with emotion, and common sense mustcontend with the majesty and sometimes the seeming perversity ofthe law. He follows the trail from Michigan to Washington, DC,revealing how lawyers argued and strategized, how lower-courtjudges fought behind the scenes for control of the cases, and whythe White House filed a brief in support of the white students, inopposition to a chorus of retired generals and admirals worriedthat the military academies would no longer reflect the face ofAmerica.
Finally, Stohr details the fallout from the Supreme Court'scontroversial 2003 ruling that both upheld affirmative action andupended some of the methods that had been used to effect it. Andhe shows how colleges and universities are reshaping theiraffirmative action policies--an evolution closely watched by lowercourts, employers, civil rights lawyers, legislators, regulators,and the public.
A Black and White Case brings alive and brilliantlyexplains one of the most important Supreme Court decisions on thefundamental and divisive subject of race relations in America.
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