Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978). Research Proposal

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Analysis: Hamacher was denied admission as a freshman applicant, but would have been admitted if he was a member of an underrepresented minority applicant. Hamacher was able and ready to apply as a transfer student, which gave him standing to seek prospective relief. Therefore, Hamacher had standing to bring the suit, both as a student who was denied admission as a freshman, and as a student seeking admission as a transfer student. While the Bakke decision make it clear that diversity can constitute a compelling state interest, the automatic distribution of one-fifth of the points needed to guarantee admission to every underrepresented minority, simply because of race, is not narrowly tailored to achieve educational diversity. Instead, that system amounts to a quota system, and quota systems are not considered permissible. Instead of establishing quotas, universities need to establish admissions guidelines whereby every applicant can be considered as an individual. However, race can be a part of each individual's consideration. While the Court found that the old undergraduate admission guidelines violated the nature and spirit of Bakke, they did not have similar problems with the Law School's policies. Instead, the Court believed that the Law School did have a legitimate interest in obtaining a critical mass of minority students. This was due to the fact that future lawyers needed to have exposure to minorities to understand diversity, so that diversity was an important element for the entire student body, not just for minority students who would be admitted as the result of race considerations.

Conclusion: In Gratz, the Court granted the University's motion for summary judgment in respect to its current admissions guidelines.

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However, the Court found that the University's admissions guidelines for the period from 1995 through 1997 operated as a quota, which violated Bakke and granted petitioners' motion for summary judgment in respect to those years. In Grutter, the Court determined that the Law School's admissions program was appropriate and that a school could seek to have a critical mass of minority students. As a result of the two decisions, it became clear that, while not able to establish a quota system, universities could use race as a plus factor in admissions in order to obtain diversity in their student bodies.

Case Comparison: The decisions in Bakke, Gratz, and Grutter demonstrate how the Supreme Court is consistently stepping away from affirmative action. While the Court still feels that affirmative action is necessary in order to achieve a diverse student body, the individual consideration of individual discrimination, which meant that minority students were not receiving Equal Protection when required to go head-to-head with Caucasian students have given way to questions of diversity. While the Court can no longer say that an individual candidate is less able to compete because of race, it still acknowledges that, taken as a whole, certain minority groups are likely to have faced the type of educational disparity that makes it difficult for them to perform at the same level as Caucasians. However, the Court also believed that these lingering effects of institutionalized racism were rapidly disappearing and that any form of affirmative action would probably be unnecessary within a quarter of a century......

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