College race-baiting

Anyone who wonders why the people of Michigan concluded they needed a state constitutional amendment to ensure their public schools didn’t discriminate against people on account of race needs only to look at some of the race-baiting on our university campuses.

In Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the Supreme Court recently declined to rule on the constitutionality of race-based admissions at public universities. But it did uphold the democratic right of the American people to use the lawful process in their states to pass restrictions banning the practice.

Sounds reasonable. And it is in sharp contrast to two recent, high-profile incidents at two different public universities. The day before the Supreme Court decision was handed down, Brent Terry at Eastern Connecticut State University cautioned his students that “colleges will start closing up” and revert back to the 1800s if the “racist, misogynist, money-grubbing” GOP has control of both the House and Senate in 2014.

http://goo.gl/RqHvTE

Please TweetMe

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

FINALLY GETTING IT RIGHT ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

By: Charles Krauthammer
4/25/2014 04:57 AM

RESIZE:AAA

Every once in a while a great, conflicted country gets an insoluble problem exactly right. Such is the Supreme Court’s ruling this week on affirmative action. It upheld a Michigan referendum prohibiting the state from discriminating either for or against any citizen on the basis of race.

The Schuette ruling is highly significant for two reasons: its lopsided majority of 6 to 2, including a crucial concurrence from liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, and, even more important, Breyer’s rationale. It couldn’t be simpler. “The Constitution foresees the ballot box, not the courts, as the normal instrument for resolving differences and debates about the merits of these programs.”

http://goo.gl/jjxq1H

TweetMe

Supreme Court approve state bans on affirmative action

Richard Wolf, USA TODAY12:43 p.m. EDT April 22, 2014

(Photo: Susan Walsh, AP)

SHARE 3152CONNECT 337TWEET 238COMMENTEMAILMORE

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court dealt
another blow to affirmative action programs Tuesday, upholding the right of states to ban
racial preferences in university admissions.

The 6-2 decision came in a case brought by Michigan, where a voter-approved initiative
banning affirmative action had been tied up in court for a decade.

Seven other states – California, Florida, Washington, Arizona, Nebraska, Oklahoma and New Hampshire – have similar bans. Now, others may follow suit.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/22/supreme-court-affirmative-action-michigan/4481923/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's nice to see the Law finally acknowledging that Reverse Racism is equally as Evil and ILLEGAL as the original.  But what will the Race Hustlers do now?

Michigan Ban on Affirmative Action Upheld by Supreme Court Read more: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/legaltimes/id=1202652073539/Michigan-Ban-on-Affirmative-Action-Upheld-by-Supreme-Court#ixzz2zdN8EBKF

Tony Mauro , Legal Times

April 22, 2014    |

Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/NLJ.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday voted, 6-2, to uphold Michigan's ban on state affirmative action programs, finding that the court has no authority to set aside the measure approved by voters.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the main opinion for a fractured court. In announcing the ruling, Kennedy said the decision is "not about the constitutionality or merits" of affirmative action generally. Read the court's opinion here.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor read from her dissent, which was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In her 58-page dissent, Sotomayor said the court "eviscerates" a key equal-protection guarantee that government should not make it harder for minorities to participate in self-government. Justice Elena Kagan recused in the case, probably because she was involved in the litigation at earlier stages as solicitor general at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Read more: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/legaltimes/id=1202652073539/Michigan-Ban-on-Affirmative-Action-Upheld-by-Supreme-Court#ixzz2zdNCND3s

Why “Blind” Grading Makes Good Sense, and Should Be Used More Extensively Outside of the Context of Law School Exams

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR

Two activities that occupy a lot of time for law professors during the winter break are grading exams and visiting with family and friends —including high-school-age kids, and college students who are home for the holidays.  As I was doing both of these things (in turn, not simultaneously) over the last month, it struck me that the “blind” grading that is currently the norm in law school exams—in which exams have school-issued identification numbers but no names on them—is uncommon in American colleges (or at least at the research universities from which the recent college students I know and teach come from), and almost unheard of in high school.  In the space below, I briefly discuss the great advantages (and occasional disadvantages) of blind grading, and suggest that colleges and even high schools consider making wider use of it.

The Origins and Intuitive Appeal of Law School Blind Grading

Some legal historians have linked the prevalence of anonymous grading in law schools to the proliferation, beginning in the 1970s, of race-based affirmative action programs in law school admissions. Interestingly enough, some of these scholars suggest that blind grading was deployed not so much to prevent discrimination against (otherwise identifiable) minority-group students, but rather to prevent faculty members who support affirmative action from affording a grading preference in favor of minority students.  This counterintuitive notion points up the fact that purposeful or subconscious bias need not be driven by animus, but also can stem from positive feelings that a grader has towards an individual or group.  Indeed, blind grading may be just as important in preventing teachers from rewarding “favorites” as it is in precluding graders from punishing “troublemakers.”  (And in a world where all grades are “relative”—whether or not a class is graded on a curve—in the sense that GPAs are compared across the student body, boosting one student’s grade is really not so different than knocking another’s down.)

- See more at: 

http://verdict.justia.com/2014/01/17/blind-grading-makes-good-sense-used-extensively-outside-context-law-school-exams?utm_source=Justia+Law&utm_campaign=f8ce7dca23-summary_newsletters_jurisdictions&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_92aabbfa32-f8ce7dca23-406021093#sthash.AJv9vB6F.dpuf