Vulgar attitudinalism

[Elizabeth Dale]

And what of Brown, Sandy? Will this opinion you imagine assert that while 
Brown asserted there was a value to integrated education in K-12, it could 
not have meant that value should be achieved through affirmative action? Or 
will it sadly reflect on the difficulties of achieving Brown's lofty goals 
given the realities of what we used to call white flight and now simply 
accept as the inevitable homogenization, by race and class, of 
neighborhoods, cities and towns?



Elizabeth Dale
University of Florida
Associate Professor, Legal History, Dept of History
Affiliate Professor, Legal History, Levin College of Law

PO Box 117320
Gainesville, Florida 32611

352-392-0271
edale at history.ufl.edu
http://plaza.ufl.edu/edale


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sanford Levinson" <SLevinson at law.utexas.edu>
To: <lawcourts-l at usc.edu>; "ConLaw Prof" <conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 2:45 PM
Subject: RE:Vulgar attitudinalism



With regard to the two cases on which the Court just granted cert,
involving the use of race by local school districts, let me predict the
following (without reading either of the cases below or, obviously, any
of the briefs that are to be written or listening to any of the
forthcoming oral argument):

The final vote will be 5-4 to strike down the plans (since I cannot
conceive that any of the moderates voted to grant cert in order to
uphold the decisions below or that Alito or Roberts voted to grant cert
because they knew that lots of us were interested in what his views were
on the issue) with Chief Justice Roberts writing the majority decision
distinguishing Grutter. That is, I think that "attitude" will triumph,
though part of the relevant attitude is a reluctance to reverse Grutter,
out of a desire to pay some fealty to stare decisis and, perhaps more
importantly, because lots of people whom elite Republicans respect, such
as 65 large corporations and lots of former generals, admirals, and high
officials in DOD, emphasized the importance of affirmative action in
elite institutions for business and the military.  Whether or not it
makes any sense to praise "diversity" at elite institutions (which very,
very few people attend) and not in America's public schools is another
matter, beyond the scope of this foray into Holmesian prediction.

sandy
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