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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35217 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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the decision leaves open the ability for universities to consider how an applicant's race affected their life "concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university".

Which is a loophole you can drive the whole edifice through. Thanks for nothing, Roberts.

It's a good decision, sir.

I suppose this is as good a place as any to ask, what role does Thomas's opinion hold when it comes to lower court rulings? He wrote his own opinion after all, that had to count for something, but Roberts has the main opinion and that obviously counts for more.

what role does Thomas's opinion hold when it comes to lower court rulings?

Approximately the same as if he had posted it on Twitter instead.

Well, slightly more. While they aren't binding precedent, they do regularly cite concurrences or dissents of cases—it happened a bunch in this opinion, in Plessy, Grutter, and others, and Thomas especially likes citing his own dissents and concurrences, I believe.

Sure, but the Supreme Court can cite whatever it wants. They cite things like the Articles of Confederation or the Magna Carta all the time. There is really no difference between citing a noncontrolling Justice Story opinion, and citing his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. The court would have no problem citing a tweet if the opportunity arose.

That's the point of Roberts here. In any case where he knows full well the vote is going to upset the status quo and he cannot stop it (like he did when there was a more consistent 5-4 majority), he by pure happenstance writes the most moderately worded and least status-quo upsetting decision which can be written and still signed on to by the "majority." If this had been a 5-4 majority opinion with Roberts in the minority, this would have been a far stronger opinion.

My understanding based on rumor from within "conservative" legal circles is that he attempted to do the same thing in the Dobbs decision, including looking the other way as it was leaked because he failed to get the majority to sign on to his more watered-down version and edits.

Surely, we'll get that leaker any day now; apparently the most concealed leaker in the history of leakers despite it being known with a decent amount of confidence within a couple days due to the meta data in the document and the plausible leak vector to a sports writer.

"At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise... despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.)"

Roberts does specifically mention application essays as unacceptable. That does restrict one of the simplest, most pervasive methods universities currently use to discriminate based on race. Although I agree they'll be back in 10 years to decide if something qualifies as "other means" in a new case. That was probably going to happen anyway.

He doesn't establish application essays as unlawful. Just an application essay which say "I'm black" or whatever. He explicitly allows for application essays with "discussion [of race] is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university". That will be transformed into giving high weight to a pro-forma recitation of how being of a favored minority race matters.

Relatedly, some applicants might be able to use the essay to imply their race in a clever way that gets them in

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna742586

Stanford knew this kid was South Asian though, he didn’t get in by tricking them.

Roberts might honestly tell himself that all he’s doing is allowing applicants to write about their lived experiences in their essays, but in practice he surely knows that what he said will be cited endlessly to maintain the current regime this supposedly bans.

Just Roberts Things, although what’s worse is that the others could have passed something stricter without him. This isn’t even a pyrrhic victory, it’s actually worse than anyone on the right expected.

Hold on you incorrigible blackpillers, wouldn't it be worse if they actually upheld AA and the majority opinion was Jackson's ?

I'm pretty sure @The_Nybbler predicted that the supreme court would uphold roe and AA and that Musk's takeover of twitter would fail.

I'm pretty sure I did not predict the Supreme Court would uphold Roe. I've made several predictions about Musk's takeover of Twitter, though I don't have convenient links to them.

When roe got struck, you refused to update because it hadn‘t taken effect. When Musk was buying twitter, you refused to update because the deal wasn‘t finalized. Source. Now AA‘s struck and it‘s the same spiel.

Of course, if they‘d upheld, you‘d consider it a validation of your perspective. Do you ever update in the other direction?

When roe got struck, you refused to update because it hadn‘t taken effect.

When Dobbs got leaked. But in that post I made no predictions; I merely refused to update prematurely.

Are you updating now, belatedly?

Often 'refusing to update prematurely" is an excuse not to update at all, like the guy who needs 1000 hours of research 'as a starter' before he can change his mind on HBD.

Certainly I agree that Supreme Court is allowing abortion bans by states. As for Musk, I think the jury is still out; Twitter is definitely better for now but he just turned it over to Linda Yaccarino, who is literally straight out of the mainstream media.

The anti-woke right really goes from victory to victory these days. For once I‘m reading the woke‘s underdog pitches about losing constantly to the all-powerful evil forces „who want to enslave minorities and women" etc and it seems like they have a point in there somewhere.

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Not worse than what I expected.

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