Justice Kennedy has emerged as the unlikely hero of affirmative action

[SirLinksALot]

SOURCE: BUSINESS INSIDER

URL: http://www.businessinsider.com/justice-kennedy-upholds-affirmative-action-2016-6

by Peter Jacobs


Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has emerged as the unlikely hero of affirmative action, supplying the swing vote in the court's 4-3 decision to uphold the use of race in college admissions decisions.

This is a first for Kennedy, who before this most recent case, Fisher v. University of Texas, had never voted to uphold an affirmative-action program.

The dispute centers on Abigail Fisher, a white woman now in her mid-20s, who sued the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 after she was denied admission to the state's flagship public university.

She says she was discriminated against because of her race and that UT Austin accepted nonwhite students with worse grades and fewer extracurricular activities.

"Privileging one characteristic above all others does not lead to a diverse student body," Kennedy wrote in his opinion, expressing support of holistic admissions decisions. "Indeed, to compel universities to admit students based on class rank alone is in deep tension with the goal of educational diversity as this Court's cases have defined it."

The Supreme Court first heard Fisher's case in 2013 before ruling to send it down to a lower court to be reevaluated. It's likely that the Supreme Court's conservative justices were relying on Kennedy's skepticism to strike down affirmative action for good when they voted to rehear Fisher's case last year.

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[ArneFufkin]

Not only the swing vote - Rush indicated that Kennedy wrote the majority opinion.

[geronl]

Trump will want more justices like Kennedy

[SirLinksALot]

Trump will want more justices like Kennedy

So, which of the ones whose names he brought out as the kind of judges he would appoint will turn out to be like Kennedy?

The Conservative hero Ronald Reagan nominated Justice Kennedy for those who forgot.

[The_Reader_David]

We remember that Reagan nominated Justice Kennedy.

We also remember Lord Acton's dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The abuse of the bench to legislate by twisting the Constitution's plain meaning cannot be reliably reigned in by appointing originalist judges, but only by Congress legislating limits to the Court's power and Congress, the Executive and the states ignoring the Court's subsequent declarations the limits on its power are unconstitutional, or Congress having the guts to declare legislating from the bench to be a high crime, impeaching and removing judges.  Until the political branches had the guts to do that, the Republic is dead and we are ruled by a nonumverate (now briefly reduced to an octumverate) of unelected jurists.

[Chieftain]

This would have been tied 4-4 if Justice Scalia were alive because Paul Bart, Mall Cop Justice Elena Kagin had to recuse herself itself...