2. Diversity on Trial: Affirmative Action's Michigan Test

In 1978, the Supreme Court allowed colleges to take race into account when crafting their incoming classes. Throughout the '80s and '90s, that’s what many schools did: To get a diverse incoming class, universities used race as one factor among many.

But some schools get a lot of applicants — tens of thousands of students applying for just a few thousand spots. How do you complete an individualized review of so many people? How do you make sure you consider race consistently across those tens of thousands? Is there a way to streamline the process while still complying with what Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. said the Equal Protection Clause requires?

This is the second episode of UnCommon Law's three-part series about the Supreme Court's biggest affirmative action in education cases. In the first episode we looked at the 1978 case of Allan Bakke, an applicant to medical school who was denied admission. In this episode, we explore the 2003 cases of Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger.

Guests include:

• Diego Bernal — Texas state representative and former president of the Latino Law Students Association at the University of Michigan Law School
• Michelle Adams — Professor at the University of Michigan Law School
• Greg Stohr — Supreme Court reporter for Bloomberg News
• Ted Shaw — Professor at the University of North Carolina, and former president of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund
• Terence Pell — President of the Center for Individual Rights
• Marvin Krislov — President of Pace University, and former vice president and general counsel at the University of Michigan
• Lee Bollinger — President of Columbia University, and former president of the University of Michigan
• Agnes Aleobua — Principal of Citizens Academy Glenville in Cleveland, and former student intervenor at the University of Michigan
• Cristina Rodríguez — Professor at Yale Law School and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor