June 30, 2007
What keeps law professors awake at night
Want an example of the gulf between liberals and conservatives, the irreconcilable world views that make one think that pointy-headed professors live on different planets than ordinary people (i.e., non-lawyers)?
A good place to start is the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court this week to curtail the use of race in determining where students can go to school, Parents Involved v. Seattle School District (05-908) & Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education (05-915)
The school districts in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, had implemented race-based admissions, in part to foster greater "diversity."
Slate has been hosting three liberal legal "experts" -- law professor Walter Dellinger, legal reporter Dahlia Lithwick, and journalist Stuart Taylor -- who've been engaged in a back-and-forth discussion on the recent rulings by the Supreme Court.
In the last entry in the 18-part series, Dellinger holds up a quote from the opinion by Chief Justice Roberts as an example of unconscionable, almost unbelievably mean-spirited conservative dogma.
Dellinger writes:
The court's decision is everything conservatives should abhor. It is a form of social engineering dictated from Washington. It ignores the principle of local control of schools. It sets aside the judgment of elected officials, even though nothing in the text of the Constitution requires that result, and the original understanding at the time of drafting of the 14th Amendment is solidly against it. It equates the well-intentioned and inclusive programs supported by both white and black people in Louisville and Seattle with the whole grotesquerie of racially oppressive practices which came down, as Charles Black once said, in apostolic succession from slavery and the Black Codes.
What was it that Chief Justice Roberts said that left Dellinger in such high dudgeon? Prepare yourself for this incendiary statement.
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
Are you stunned? Are you shocked? Are you appalled?
Dellinger said that he awoke at 4 in the morning, troubled by this repellent phrase, one that left him "stunned" by the moral obtuseness of the decision.
As a conservative, I find Roberts' choice of words to be marvelously simple, clear and direct.
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
I can't help but wonder if Dellinger would have been similarly appalled by a hope that one day Americans "would be judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin," notwithstanding the fact that the Rev. Martin Luther King said it -- and that it is essentially indistinguishable from the sentiment expressed by Chief Justice Roberts.
I'd also like to note that Dellinger finds the decision to be an outrageous interference in states' rights, an area of interest to him and his fellow travelers only when the rights being infringed are on the leftmost fringes of the political spectrum. Lefties never seem to have a problem infringing with abandon on states' rights when the rights being limited are those most valued by conservatives.
Finally, isn't it interesting that Slate couldn't find a conservative to balance this liberal gabfest, which might have made it ultimately more informative and entertaining than this echo-chamber of politically correct me-too-ing.
UPDATE: Yeah, Taylor is more moderate than Lithwick and Dellinger, but still, no one to argue forcefully for the position that, yeah, racial discrimination is racial discrimination?
Posted by Mike Lief at June 30, 2007 04:06 PM
| TrackBack
Comments
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
It's nice to see the highest court in the land gets it--when few others do. It's time to stop the nonsense and focus fairness.
Posted by: Shyloe at July 2, 2007 11:58 AM