AA
Check the news: Supreme Court upheld the Michigan law school AA policy and struck the undergraduate points system. Should make for interesting reading, and sounds like it will provide little or no resolution to the debate.
UPDATE: I've read O'Connor's majority opinion in Grutter and think that, while eloquent and heartfelt, it's pretty out of touch with the AA jurisprudence of the last twenty years. Ginsburg's concurrence had me laughing as soon as it quoted the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Kennedy's dissent is to the point, arguing simply that strict scrutiny was not applied. Rehnquist's dissent goes into quite a bit of detail in hammering the so-called "critical mass" theory, particularly by comparing how different minorities are treated by Michigan (e.g. how can a critical mass of blacks require 80-90 students, but a critical mass of hispanics requires only 40-50). Scalia's dissent is snide and probably correct, particularly his disgust at the new analysis that will have to take place in order to decide whether a particular AA program falls under Grutter or Gratz. Thomas' dissent is 31 pages and I'm not finished with it yet.
UPDATE II: I think Thomas' dissent is really quite brilliant. That's not to say I agree with it, but he at least covers all the relevant legal issues in a way that O'Connor does not. Perhaps O'Connor just couldn't find a way to justify the decision on recent precedent, and is thus making a move away from it. That might make sense despite her not acknowledging it (and pretending she's just following the not-really-precedent of Powll in Bakke), but pending my reading of Gratz I suspect she does not want to revisit any of the decisions of the 80s and 90s. If that's true, I think she really punted the most important issues in the case. Compare Thomas' discussion of the importance of higher education (and elite public law schools in particular) to O'Connor's brief assertion that education is just different from other fields. She may be right, but I think Thomas poses some serious challenges that go unanswered.
