Justice on the Brink by Linda Greenhouse

Author:Linda Greenhouse [Greenhouse, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2021-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

These last sentences were barbs aimed directly and unmistakably at Chief Justice Roberts. In the Parents Involved case in 2007, before Sotomayor’s arrival at the court, Roberts had written the opinion that invalidated two racially conscious student assignment plans aimed at preserving integration in school districts where housing patterns were driving resegregation. Roberts had concluded his opinion with the line: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” The line was not original with Roberts—he had borrowed it, unattributed, from an opinion in an earlier phase of the case by a conservative Ninth Circuit judge, Carlos Bea—but it received wide attention and to the ruling’s many critics seemed to summarize the vacuity of the decision’s rationale.

Roberts, infuriated by Sotomayor’s personal reference, took the unusual step of responding directly with an opinion of his own:

The dissent states that “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.” And it urges that “[r]ace matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: ‘I do not belong here.’ ” But it is not “out of touch with reality” to conclude that racial preferences may themselves have the debilitating effect of reinforcing precisely that doubt, and—if so—that the preferences do more harm than good. To disagree with the dissent’s views on the costs and benefits of racial preferences is not to “wish away, rather than confront” racial inequality. People can disagree in good faith on this issue, but it similarly does more harm than good to question the openness and candor of those on either side of the debate.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.