Affirmative Action

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and chief executive of the National Constitution Center, a law professor at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of the New Republic. As the Supreme Court prepares to decide the fate of affirmative action , voting rights and same-sex marriage by the end of June, interest in the ideological and institutional fault lines among the justices remains high. Ever since Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took the helm in 2005, a series of books and articles have...

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and chief executive of the National Constitution Center, a law professor at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of the New Republic. As the Supreme Court prepares to decide the fate of affirmative action , voting rights and same-sex marriage by the end of June, interest in the ideological and institutional fault lines among the justices remains high. Ever since Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took the helm in 2005, a series of books and articles have...

Ruth Marcus's splendid Jan. 19 op-ed column, " One wise Latina ," on Sonia Sotomayor's rise from humble origins to the Supreme Court, ended on a false note. Ms. Marcus applauded Justice Sotomayor for supporting affirmative-action programs that "create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race," while chiding Justice Clarence Thomas for "resentment of the help that came his way. " But Justice Thomas does not resent providing a leg up for what Justice Sotomayor...

Ruth Marcus's splendid Jan. 19 op-ed column, " One wise Latina ," on Sonia Sotomayor's rise from humble origins to the Supreme Court, ended on a false note. Ms. Marcus applauded Justice Sotomayor for supporting affirmative-action programs that "create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race," while chiding Justice Clarence Thomas for "resentment of the help that came his way. " But Justice Thomas does not resent providing a leg up for what Justice Sotomayor...

America's war over affirmative action has gone on longer than any of the country's military conflicts, and over the decades each side of this debate has spawned a vast literature of argument. So I feel some dread in seeing the debate newly enlivened today. Yet the Sotomayor nomination , the Supreme Court's decision in the Ricci case and the election of our first black president make it inevitable. What is the future of group preferences in America? Doesn't a black president render them obsolete?

Regarding the June 1 news article " A case of a relationship on the mend ": I couldn't agree more with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's comment about Yale University's affirmative action policies tainting his law degree. Indeed, affirmative action stamps the recipients with the stigma of inferiority, insinuating that they couldn't get ahead on their own. This is a good reason for ending such programs once and for all. John D.S. Muhlenberg, Vienna

CHICAGO -- Sixteen months after voters in Michigan voted to kill affirmative action in the public sphere, opponents of preferences based on race and gender are pushing five more states to ban the practice. Foes of affirmative action, which is meant to address current and historical inequities, delivered 128,744 signatures to Colorado authorities earlier this month. Similar organizations in Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska are circulating petitions as civil rights groups and educators are mobilizing to defeat the measures.

Gail Heriot and two other members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights would like the Supreme Court to know that new research indicates that race-preferential admissions to America's top universities are hurting those they are supposed to help. "If this research is right, we now have fewer minority science and engineering graduates than we would have under race neutral admissions policies," Heriot said in an amicus brief filed along with fellow commissioners Peter Kirsanow and...

Chelsea Clinton wasn't that bad. She is educated and knowledgeable and has all kinds of access. Her first segment for NBC's "Making a Difference" brought needed attention to a deserving Arkansas woman mentoring low-income children in ways that don't involve cleaning toilets. (Sorry, Newt, but I could not resist .) Like other broadcast beginners before her, Clinton will gradually become more at ease in front of the camera. I even forgive her for running to become part of the media she ran...

The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to continue to allow universities to take race into account when assembling their student bodies, saying the government has a "vital interest" in drawing its leaders from a diverse pool of college graduates. The administration supported the University of Texas, whose policy of considering race as one factor in deciding who will be admitted to the flagship university in Austin is being challenged. The case will be one...

"Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. " That was Barack Obama in 2008 . And he was right. Reagan was an ideological inflection point, ending a 50-year liberal ascendancy and beginning a 30-year conservative ascendancy. It is common for one party to take control and enact its ideological agenda. Ascendancy, however, occurs only when the opposition inevitably regains power and then proceeds to accept the basic premises of the preceding revolution.

College leaders in the Washington region and across the country are hoping to preserve their power to use race and ethnicity as factors in admissions as the Supreme Court considers whether to end such preferences. Georgetown, George Washington and Johns Hopkins universities joined others in briefs urging the court to uphold the status quo in admissions in a case that involves affirmative action at the University of Texas . The court, which appears deeply divided on the issue, heard oral arguments...

When the Gallup Poll asked Americans to identify the top challenge facing the country in July 1964, 60 percent named racial issues. In the summer of 2012, 1 percent picked race. Obviously, these findings reflect the great distance the United States has traveled. Racial tension has never disappeared, and probably never will; take the Trayvon Martin incident. Yet even before Barack Obama's election as president in 2008, racial peace was the dominant trend. Not even the 1992 beating of Rodney King by...

Gail Heriot and two other members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights would like the Supreme Court to know that new research indicates that race-preferential admissions to America's top universities are hurting those they are supposed to help. "If this research is right, we now have fewer minority science and engineering graduates than we would have under race neutral admissions policies," Heriot said in an amicus brief filed along with fellow commissioners Peter Kirsanow and...

The Supreme Court begins a new term Monday with the most important civil rights agenda in years on the horizon and amid intensified scrutiny of the relationship between Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his fellow conservatives. If last term's blockbuster cases involving immigration and President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act centered on the reach of the federal government's powers, this term offers a chance to cast the 21st century meaning of the Constitution's guarantee of...

The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to continue to allow universities to take race into account when assembling their student bodies, saying the government has a "vital interest" in drawing its leaders from a diverse pool of college graduates. The administration supported the University of Texas, whose policy of considering race as one factor in deciding who will be admitted to the flagship university in Austin is being challenged. The case will be one...

College leaders in the Washington region and across the country are hoping to preserve their power to use race and ethnicity as factors in admissions as the Supreme Court considers whether to end such preferences. Georgetown, George Washington and Johns Hopkins universities joined others in briefs urging the court to uphold the status quo in admissions in a case that involves affirmative action at the University of Texas . The court, which appears deeply divided on the issue, heard oral arguments Wednesday.

Regarding the June 1 news article " A case of a relationship on the mend ": I couldn't agree more with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's comment about Yale University's affirmative action policies tainting his law degree. Indeed, affirmative action stamps the recipients with the stigma of inferiority, insinuating that they couldn't get ahead on their own. This is a good reason for ending such programs once and for all. John D.S. Muhlenberg, Vienna