Fw: Today's Law School Ruling

Luke Weiger lweiger at umich.edu
Tue May 14 16:56:26 PDT 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "B. Joseph White" <bjosephwhite at umich.edu>

Today, we have learned that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has found in our favor in the Grutter case and determined our Law School admissions policy to be constitutional. A majority of the court said our admissions program meets the guidelines established by the Supreme Court in the Bakke decision. The full decision can be found on the web at http://pacer.ca6.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/newopn.pl?puid= or at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=6th&navby=case&no=02a 0170p.

This is a great day for the University of Michigan and for all of higher education, as well as for the numerous corporations, educational groups, and others who filed amicus briefs in support of the University. I am pleased that the court recognized that diversity brings educational benefits to all students. This is part of the University's historic and significant commitment to diversity in all its facets, and today's decision reaffirms our community's long-standing values. We must prepare our students to learn and to lead in the world's most diverse democracy.

The court noted that our Law School admissions policy, adopted by the faculty in 1992, is "virtually indistinguishable" from the Harvard plan held out as a model in the Bakke decision. The court found that our policy considers each applicant as an individual in making admissions decisions, and does not shield any applicant from competing with the rest of the applicant pool. "The record demonstrates that the Law School does not employ a quota for underrepresented minority students," the majority opinion stated. "Essentially, both the Law School's admission policy and the Harvard plan attend to the numbers of underrepresented minority students to ensure that all students---minority and majority alike---will be able to enjoy the benefits of an academically diverse student body."

The case challenging our undergraduate admissions policy (Gratz v. Bollinger) has not yet been decided by the appeals court. As you may recall, the district court previously upheld our undergraduate admissions program.

I am sure these court decisions will generate many questions within our community. Once decisions have been rendered in both cases, we will be working to plan a public forum where experts will be available to provide analysis of the cases and respond to questions about their impact. Please watch the University's web site at http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/ for details about this event.



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