It is true that some language in those opinions might be read to suggest that remedying past discrimination is the only permissible justification for race-based governmental action.
"As we see people like Barack Obama achieve the highest office in the land and Judge Sotomayor's own nomination to the highest court, I think it is harder and harder to see the justifications for race-conscious decisions across the board".
After Bakke, to the extent that Justice Powell spoke for the court, diversity became the sole permissible justification for taking race into account in admissions.
Their reasoning was that bad cases make bad law: the Supreme Court, even at its most liberal, has never endorsed the goal of diversity as justification for a race-based employment decision.
Let's be clear here: there is no such thing as "responsible speeding," just as there is no justification for drag racing!
Add all these factors up, and we don't see much justification for describing these races as tossups or as merely "leaning" toward Republicans, as some other forecasters have them: they are pretty safe bets to be Republican pickups.
Conversely, Dorothy Roberts emphasizes the dangers of using racial categories within medicine, suggesting that it not only validates egregious ideas of biological racial hierarchy but also contributes to conservative justifications for limiting race-based affirmative action and even social welfare funding, which supposedly would be wasted on genetically inferior minority populations.
But Michigan's "mystical 'critical mass' justification for its discrimination by race challenges even the most gullible mind," Scalia wrote in his dissenting opinion.
Before this Court, as they have throughout this litigation, respondents assert only one justification for their use of race in the admissions process: obtaining "the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body".
Although the court acknowledged that no decision from this court since Bakke has explicitly accepted the diversity rationale discussed by Justice Powell, it also concluded that this court had not, in the years since Bakke, ruled out such a justification for the use of race.
It is Mr. Romney's disconnect with conservatives that Newt Gingrich has seized to form his justification for staying in the Republican race despite a long string of losses.
