Supreme Court Cases

From the 1970s until the present day, the Supreme Court has heard numerous cases concerning the issue of affirmative action in response to a series of legal challenges against the practice that began almost immediately after the first affirmative action program in university admissions was implemented at Harvard Law School in 1966. These important cases include Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Ricci v. DeStefano, Grutter v. Bollinger, and Fisher v. University of Texas. In this current term, however, the court will decide in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina whether or not to overrule its prior decision in Grutter v. Bollinger and hold that race can no longer serve as an admissions factor to institutions of higher education. If the court overrules Grutter v. Bollinger it will spell the end of the legal practice of affirmative action in institutions of higher education.   

With this background knowledge, we sought to examine the views of the University of Scranton students and faculty on and in regards to important Supreme Court cases dealing with the issue of affirmative action from the 1970s-2010s. We hypothesized that these views on affirmative action would be largely positive, due to the progessive nature of the University of Scranton. The results of our research will serve to illuminate the unique response of the University of Scranton students and faculty to the legal struggle for affirmative action that exists even until this day.