The Greenhouse effect

Linda Greenhouse provides a modernist twist to Justice O’Connor’s rewriting of civil rights law in the Grutter case: “Context and the court.” The article runs with a photograph of someone who looks suspiciously like Queen Sandra I:
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The article includes a less regal photograph of the man who takes his bearings from the proposition that all men are created equal and the related legal propositions that were tubed in Grutter. Fervently do we pray that that proposition will be restored to its rightful place of prominence in American public life. All honor to Justice Thomas for reasserting the proposition in this context.
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Lost in the commentary on the Michigan cases is the simple fact that one of the basic tasks of the Court was to construe and apply the straightforward language of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Regardless of the potential ambiguity of the fourteenth amendment’s “equal protection” clause, the language of Title VI is remarkably clear. It cannot be squared with Queen Sandra’s Grutter decision. It would be nice if any of the commentators noted the applicable law that the Court has in its higher wisdom purposely mangled.

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