Talk:Grutter v. Bollinger

Untitled
The title of this case is Grutter v. Bollinger, but the citation is not yet complete. Is it appropriate to place the citation as it is compiled so far, that is 539 U.S. ___ (2003) or to leave it out of the article until after the citation is complete?

it is now complete. it's citation is 539 U.S. 306 (2003)

3/15/06 In "Please note that the '25 years from now' phrase was echoed by Justice Thomas in a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Scalia," changed "concurring" to "dissenting". MKFreeberg 16:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I removed this:


 * Justice Thomas, in addition to arguing against the constitutional nature of the racial admission policy, also argued the issue based on the history of blacks in America, and on the fact that the law school's policy benefits black women but does not appear to assist black men to be admitted.

Besides being poorly written, I don't think this person got the point of Thomas's footnote; it was a sarcastic note that not all forms of underrepresentation had been dealt with (specifically, that of black males), not an actual plea that even more racial preferences would have solved the problem. This was a random footnote, anyway; if we're going to include more information, there's better stuff to add. SnowFire 20:50, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Possible COPYVIO concern
A review of Grutter v. Bollinger shows there are common verbatim passages in the article with a Xanga blog by jrgini37 apparently posted August 2005. This issue of whether the material in WP was taken from the Xanga piece was raised on the WP Help Desk. However, it appears the material in the WP article significantly pre-dates the ones in Xanga (as early as June 2003). I looked at original court documents and could find no obvious reasons for identical language, but further research shows the highest correlation is with what purports to be a law school student's paper apparently published in 2004 by www.4lawschool.com. (I keyed in on the phrase, "perhaps twenty-five years hence, racial affirmative action would no longer be necessary in order to promote . . .".) Since I don't have a means for verifying the actual publishing date of the 4lawshool.com paper (which is copyrighted, by the way), or whether its author (Bram) is an incarnation of either jrgini37 or the contributor to this WP Grutter v. Bollinger article, I can't determine who is copying whom.

Consequently, I tagged this article for possible copyvio and listed it on Copyright problems/2007 July 4/Articles. Comments from anyone who can shed more light on this are welcome. Jim Dunning | talk  14:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Note that in Grutter v. Bollinger, the "twenty-five years hence" sentence has been present since June 24, 2003. See this diff. That's one day after the Supreme Court's judgment in this case. I find it somewhat unlikely that our contributor copied from that 4lawschool paper... rather the inverse. At the worst, both copied from a third source, but I haven't found any. Lupo 14:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Jim Dunning | talk  15:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent point; I didn't notice those dates. I don't think the initial WP contributor did any copying, since the complete section of the article that shows up in Xanga and 4lawschool isn't fully developed until a week later on June 30, 2003 by an anon IP. Then the complete section is available to anyone after that date.

Propose deleting the "Social Implications" section
The "Social Implications" section contains factual inaccuracies, lacks citations, and adds little value to the rest of the page.

The following statements are inaccurate:

'''"Prior to this case, the 'compelling interest' required to justify affirmative action has been correcting the effects of historic discrimination. Put another way, affirmative action was intended to 'benefit' black people or other groups facing historic discrimination.

'''By contrast, in the majority decision, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor held that the compelling interest at hand lay in "obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body."

Prior to Grutter, the controlling supreme court case on the use of race as a factor in college admissions was Bakke, which, contrary to the above statement, does not permit affirmative action to "correct the effects of historic discrimination". The court in Bakke struck down the UC Davis affirmative action policy at issue in that case. The majority of the justices (Powell, from the majority, and the four in the minority) expressed the view that a diverse student body was a compelling state interest, and this principle was upheld (not changed) by the Grutter court.

Because of these factual inaccuracies and because this section lacks citations and adds little value to the rest of the page, I propose deleting this section. If anyone would like to advocate for keeping this section and can provide citations for the claims made above, I would be happy to reconsider.

Nizamarain 19:22, 7 November 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nizamarain (talk • contribs)

Followup note: based on the lack of feedback to this proposal, I will go ahead and delete this section on the grounds that it is lacking citations, contains factual inaccuracies, and adds little encyclopedic value to the rest of the page. Nizamarain 17:08, 11 December 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nizamarain (talk • contribs)

Some Proposed Changes
Hello, I am employed by Boston University's Fineman & Pappas Law Libraries. After reviewing this Wikipedia page, I believe that information from one of our faculty's scholarship might provide a valuable addition to this page. I would appreciate it if this requested edit could be reviewed.

Add citation to first paragraph 'Supreme Court's Decision' section:

Add two sentences to fourth paragraph 'Supreme Court's Decision' section:

"In the majority were Justices O'Connor, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas dissented. Much of the dissent concerned a disbelief in the validity of the law school's claim that the system was necessary to create a "critical mass" of minority students and provide a diverse educational environment." In the dissent, Chief Justice Rehnquist used admissions data to argue that unconstitutional discrimination occurred, despite the precedent set in McCleskey v. Kemp that dismiss statistical racial disparities as doctrinally irrelevant in equal protection claims.

Cf2022 (talk) 08:00, 11 January 2021 (UTC)Cf2022


 * ✅ Ferkijel (talk) 12:07, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Did Students for Fair Admissions v UNC overturn Gruter or not?
I think a detailed conversation needs to be had about this. In many ways, Roberts' opinion, and the opinion's of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh did NOT say that Gruter was an incorrect decision, in fact Kavanaugh said that Gruter did in fact engage in narrowly tailored actions to serve a compelling government interest, but that it had a time limit, and today was the end of the time limit.

I believe Gruter was not really overturned today. Would love thoughts. Trajan1 (talk) 15:47, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I think you're right about Kavanaugh. Thomas and Sotomayor believe that it it did. Part of the mess is that Grutter itself sort of came with an expiration date. This is from page 33 of Robert's opinion:

  ''Third, respondents suggest that race-based preferences ''must be allowed to continue for at least five more years, based on the Court’s statement in Grutter that it “expect[ed] that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.” 539 U. S., at 343. The 25-year mark articulated in Grutter, however, reflected only that Court’s view that race-based preferences would, by 2028, be unnecessary to ensure a requisite level of racial diversity on college campuses. Ibid. That expectation was oversold. Neither Harvard nor UNC believes that race based admissions will in fact be unnecessary in five years, and both universities thus expect to continue using race as a criterion well beyond the time limit that Grutter suggested. See Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 84–85; Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 21–707, at 85–86. Indeed, the high school applicants that Harvard and UNC will evaluate this fall using their race-based admissions systems are expected to graduate in 2028—25 years after Grutter was decided.'' ''
 * But the bottom line is the same. It's no longer constitutional to take race into account on by relying on Grutter. Whether that's a break with Grutter, an overruling of it, an amplification of it, an updating of it, or something else is something which only Chief Justice Roberts knows. Costatitanica (talk) 02:00, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I would wait for legal scholars to come out to determine how best to describe Grutter, though saying "effectively overtuned Grutter" would be reasons at this time based on news sources. M asem (t) 02:09, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I think we need to make the page significantly less definitive than it reads right now, as Roberts opinion appears to be reinforcing Grutter but finding that Harvard did not properly follow Grutter's tests; until it's clear how that plays out, we should not be so presumptuous JakeH07 (talk) 03:40, 1 July 2023 (UTC)