Patterico's Pontifications

10/8/2005

Quiz: Who Said It?

Filed under: Judiciary,Race — Patterico @ 1:20 pm



Who said it?

Quote #1:

In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. All members of our heterogeneous society must have confidence in the openness and integrity of the educational institutions that provide this training. . . . [L]aw schools “cannot be effective in isolation from the individuals and institutions with which the law interacts.” . . . Access to legal education (and thus the legal profession) must be inclusive of talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity, so that all members of our heterogeneous society may participate in the educational institutions that provide the training and education necessary to succeed in America.

Quote #2:

Our legal community must reflect our population as a whole and it should be a role model for all those who would examine us.

. . . .

Although we had been hopeful that there would be an increased enrollment of minorities in law schools it has not happened. The goal of the legal community to reflect the community at large cannot be achieved without a significant increase in the number of minorities graduating from law schools. Specific efforts are needed to encourage minority students to attend college and law school.

(Answers in the extended entry, or just click on the links.)

Quote #1: Justice O’Connor’s majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, holding that diversity is a compelling state interest justifying racial preferences in law school admissions.

Quote #2: Harriet Miers in the Texas Bar Journal, October 1992.

Now, neither of these quotes is by itself objectionable. Nobody but racists wants to wall out minorities from access to professional positions, including the legal community.

Also, it’s necessary to understand the context. Miers was discussing diversity in the context of outreach efforts by the Texas State Bar, a perfectly legitimate enterprise. She did not purport to be setting forth a constitutional analysis.

But conservatives like myself worry that laudable principles, like those expressed in the Miers quote above, will become a justification for altering the Constitution to permit racial preferences in more and more areas — as demonstrated by the O’Connor quote above.

What assurance do we have that this won’t be the case?

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