Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2012)

Posted by bradlemn on Sunday, September 16, 2012 in Roundtables.

This Roundtable considered Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which was argued at the Supreme Court in the October 2012 term. In Fisher, the Court considered whether the University of Texas’s use of race in its undergraduate admissions process was lawful under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The parties, Justices, and our authors had much material to work with on this issue. There is a long line of landmark Supreme Court cases concerning race and education, including Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1; Grutter v. Bollinger; Grutter‘s sister case, Gratz v. Bollinger; Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, and of course Brown v. Board of Education.

Professors Vikram Amar, James Blumstein, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Girardeau Spann, and Gerald Torres have each considered the precedents and offered their views on how the Court might—or should—approach this case in their “First Take” essays below.

Professors Amar, Spann, and Torres have considered the essays of their colleagues and offer some additional thoughts, comments, and ideas in their “Responses” below. We hope you find this Roundtable informative and engaging.