Grutter v. Bollinger and Marbury v. Madison: Promoting Diversity in Universities

Grutter v. Bollinger and Marbury v. Madison
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Grutter v. Bollinger and Marbury v. Madison
The law remains the final step in solving some of the socioeconomic and political challenges that society faces. One of such issues presently is diversity in learning institutions. As a diverse society, the law must find avenues of offering opportunities to every individual. Education is one of the most influential prospects when it comes to change and development in society. Hence, marking diversity through educational platforms should be monumental to communities and learning institutions. However, questions still arise on how diversity can be achieved in learning institutions without disfavoring qualified applicants. The 1978 Supreme Court Bekke Supreme Court case that struck down the admission policy geared towards creating diversity in education opened avenues for more legal approaches to addressing the issue. This paper explores the diversity admission policy through the Grutter v. Bollinger and Marbury v. Madison Supreme Court cases that combined to redefine the future of acceptance into various learning institutions. Having accorded the Supreme Court the power of judicial review, the Marbury v. Madison case opened a platform for executing the Grutter v. Bollinger case that has since steered the legal structure on diversity in admissions as a compelling state interest.
Grutter v. Bollinger
The Grutter v. Bollinger is one of the most monumental cases by the Supreme Court to have set a precedent in compelling state interest in student admission policies. When the plaintiff, Barbara Grutter, a white Michigan resident, was denied admission to the University of Michigan's Law School (defendant), she for an injunction by the district court. The plaintiff garnered a 3.8-grade average and a 161 score on the LSAT. The facts of the case are that a law school applicant sued the defendant on the ground of violation of the 14th Amendment by the defendant. The petitioner further claimed that her application to the institution was rejected primarily because the school employed race as a predominant factor while choosing applicants who would join the institution. With race as a predominant factor, applicants belonging to various ethnic groups were accorded a greater chance of joining the institution than those applicants from disfavored ethnic groups. While the district court ruled that the policy was unconstitutional and granted an injunction, the US court of appeal for the sixth circuit vacated the injunction. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The Grutter v. Bollinger bore a debate on the rule of law to warrant its present popularity. The synopsis of the rule of law was on whether diversity is a compelling interest worthy of narrowly justifying tailored employment of race in the admission policies of public universities. Hence, was it lawful for the University Of Michigan School Of Law to use race as a factor in student admissions? In conclusion, the court referred to the individualized review of each applicant that opened a platform for all the applicants to contribute to diverse educational environments. The court concluded that all the factors contributing to diversity in the institution were given serious considerations alongside race. As showcased in Grutter and predecessor Supreme Court rulings, all decisions influenced by race are not equally objectionable. Strict scrutiny can be employed to offer a detailed framework within which the decisions can be examined carefully and the sincerity of the reasons advanced by the decision-maker explored to warrant the positions.
Grounding the Grutter v. Bollinger for the Non-Minority
The Grutter v. Bollinger raised debates on the violations of the constitutional provisions in the 14th Amendment. Extensively, the debate surrounded the elements needed to ensure that the admission practices were legal and adherent to the 14th Amendment. In Title IV of the Amendment, no state shall deprive any person of property, liberty, or life; nor deny the person within the confines of equal protection of the law (Baugh & Baugh, 2020). Under the above clause, in her dissent, Justice Scalia noted referred to Title IV to note that the Constitution proscribes government discrimination based on race. Skewing the law in a case of state-provided liberty such as education should be no exception.
There are five matters in the Grutter v. Bollinger to define the legality of skewed admission policies geared towards achieving diversity in learning institutions that should counter disfavoring applicants from non-minority races (Diogo-Bacha & Marcelo, 2016). The first matter is educational the federal decision marking the legality of the policies, which turns on why the institution decided to pursue ethnic-conscious strategies in its policies. The institution needed ethnic balance in its admissions to favor the minority ethnic groups that have largely missed the admissions if based purely on merit. The other educational matter that must be assessed in reaching the legality of race-based admission is designing and implementing the policies to create a racial balance. The reason for pursuing race-based selection policies and how the policies are implemented should warrant the use of diversity as a compelling state interest to justify skewed admission policies.
The goals of policies mark the second matter when assessing the viability of the Grutter v. Bollinger ruling. As a matter of sound education and as a legal matter, clear goals and objectives that specific policies are poised to serve must precede the development and implementation of the exact policies. The policies must be assessed on how they work individually and collectively to achieve the parent institution's educational goals. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the court's decision was founded on the defendant's mission-driven nature of the diverse interests. The court was in deference to the University of Michigan's goal on academic judgments based on the value of diversity.
The legality of skewed admission policies must also be marked with evidence and process matters. While developing the policies, it is mandatory that the institution crafts evidence regarding both real and substantial benefits of diversity to the institution and society by an extension (Baugh & Baugh, 2020). Grutter v. Bollinger cited better preparation for the workforce, enhanced civic values, and improved learning and teaching. Some of the evidence matters to consider while instilling a race-sensitive selection process in an institution. The above evidence would be accompanied by the institution's race-conscious policies and their design to achieve the set policies. Anything short of the required amount of evidence would render the institution motivated to deny qualified applicants an opportunity to pursue their deserved liberty, contrary to Title IV of the 14th Amendment (Baugh & Baugh, 2020). In the process matter, the defendant established that it satisfied the legal requirements of the admission policy because it had a process in place consisti...