Building on the Promise of Diversity

4

CHAPTER

DIVERSITY AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

IN 1997, A YOUNG WHITE WOMAN was denied admission to the University of Michigan Law School partly on the basis of race. The resulting legal action eventually reached the Supreme Court (Grutter v. Bollinger et al.), which in 2003 decided, on a five-to-four vote, that the school’s admission policy was in fact constitutional.

The school never denied that race was one aspect of the ...