Defendant Legal Reasoning Brief/Opinion

Defendant Legal Reasoning Brief/Opinion
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Defendant Legal Reasoning Brief/Opinion
Introduction
The court largely considered the objections that was raised by the petitioner, and decided that justice had to be embraced strongly by not allowing race to be a factor to consider in admitting students at universities and schools of graduate. The court ruled out that there must be a limitation on considering race in admission. However, history indicates that any program of admission in universities take in to account some factors that are pre-dominant to qualify an applicant’s eligibility for enrollment into a program, so long as the program meets the judiciary’s strict test of scrutiny (Jentz, 2008). Such pre-dominant factors include race. The University of Texas (UT) at Austin made the issue of race to be an individual consideration for those applicants who are not admitted to those states that are satisfied according to the law (Cramton & Carrington 2006).
Thesis Statement: Is there a clearly articulated statement of the issues and the final decision? (These may be in separate sections, but for each issue there must be one). 20 pts
Statements of the issue include:
UT and its mission
UT was formed in 1883 with a primary mission of creating a first class university. For over 130 years, it has been considered Texas public university. The University has had a noble kind of history, and for over 70 years of UT existence, it has been segregated on race by the law. The university did not admit African Americans, until in 1950, after the court’s decision that Heman Sweatt must be included in law school of UT despite of his race (Porter, 2004).
Effort to promote diversity at UT
In efforts to appreciate the influential benefits of a body of diverse students in relation to higher education, both the state of Texas and UT have implemented critical procedures to help in promoting diversity at the university. Such procedures include:
UT used race and academic index to select students before 1996. The academic index was based on the ranks of the class of student’s secondary school, curriculum of the applicant’s secondary school and test scores that are standardized. Race was the major factor for an applicant before the admission committee could review nonminority and minority applicants, for admission.
The Hopwood v. Texas (1996) case: The case involved a white applicant Cheryl Hopwood whose admission was denied in favor of the minorities even though she had better grades than them. She sued Texas Law School which aimed to increase the enrollment of the minority students to the detriment of whites. The U.S. Court of Appeals held that the 14th Amendment does not permit this kind of discrimination. The court however concluded that the law school may or may not use race as a factor in admission. The reasoning was that since the society was racially divided, it is right that a past injustice against blacks be compensated by favoring them against the whites, therefore the law school may use racial preferences in admission but not necessarily.
This was in response to the circuit that UT was not constitutional because it considered race in admitting its law students in to the university. However, it changed its policy of admission by excluding race as a consideration factor in admission and adopted an individual index of achievement. This was to be used together with the applicant index, which included quality of leadership of the applicant, working experiences, service offered to community or school and under some circumstances that are special (Litolf, 2007).
Admission of the best 10% students in class ranking performance from Texas secondary schools. The university acknowledged the law to add the admission of the minority that they lost race admission. Research shows that, the law affects the UT objectives of education but it helps the admission of the minority (Jentz, Miller, & Cross, 2008).
DeLaney (2009) reports that UT made proposals in 2004 to consider race in the admission of students to be like in other universities. Supreme Court of the United States decided considering the case of “Bollinger v. Grutter (2003)” that UT should change its policies of admission to resemble those of other universities. The board of directors with the mandate of controlling the system of Texas University gave UT the authority to change its policies of admission in a period of one year. UT had to review its data for admission, conduct a student survey, and discuss with experts of law on constitutional matters, faculty, administration and various people on UT’s diversity of student body. Officials of the school also put in to consideration the diversity in the classes as one way of improving the change of the campus environment (DeLaney 1999).
The UT’s holistic review process. UT’s process of admission is divided into two pools. The first group is the applicants who qualify in accordance with the law while the other group does not. Although many students who are admitted fall in the first category, the university does not consider admitting an applicant who was not among the top 10% in secondary school.
Petitioner’s application for admission. The petitioner who is from Texas applied to UT as a first year in the liberal arts or business administration class, with a combination of 3.59 GPA accumulative and achievement score of 1180 out of the total 1600. Since the petitioner did not qualify according to the law of top 10%, her application was regarded as pursuant. The petitioner did not get an admission to the university. According to the Cornell University Law School, the petitioner Abigail Fisher holds the view that the University denied her admission and instead favored applicants from the minority groups. The University on the hand believes that it admitted the minority applicants so as to ensure diversity among the student population and hence benefiting the whole university (2012).
Rationale: Is the decision supported with sufficient substances? (Are the important facts identified and used to distinguish or align precedent? Are relevant precedents cited or distinguished?). 30 pts
There are important facts that are identified in the third affirmation circuit, supporting the decision sufficiently. The court indicated that the petitioner did not put the issue in to the proper format. This is because she did not raise the matters at stage of certificate. This made the court to conclude the case, however if the petitioner could have raised the issue at a certificate stage, the court’s decision could have been based on the expert testimonies. On the other hand, the court distinguished that the petitioners’ model of attacks were on the advantage argument that was not appropriate to be considered at certificate class stage. The judge concluded that the petitioner’s testimonies were not relevant and did not certify Daubert. Therefore, the Supreme Court could not have depended on these testimonies. Another fact that was identified is the failure of the petitioner to raise questions that could attack the defendant model (Wacquant, 2009).
The University is using race and ethnicity in admission in order to undo the negative effects of previous discrimination on minority students. Such discriminations have been documented in previous court cases as pointed out by the American Bar Association (2012). First was the Grutter v. Bollinger (1997) case in which a white applicant Barbara Grutter challenged University of Michigan Law School’s consideration of race as a factor in admissions. The court held that the Equal Protection Clause was not violated by the Law School through the use of racial preferences in the admission processes. The reasoning was that the Law School, which was carrying out individualized reviews of all applicants could use race as one of the factors in admitting students so as to ensure diversity in student body. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), in University of California Regents v. Bakke (1978) case, a white applicant sued the University for denying him admission based on his race thus violating the 14th Amendment. The university had only a few slots left which were reserved for the minorities. The court held that race may be considered a factor in admission and Justice Powell reasoned out that it is necessary for race and ethnicity to be considered during admissions in order to ensure a student population that is diversified. The Sweatt v. Painter (1950) case where the petitioner’s admission to University of Texas Law School was denied simply because he was black. The court held that denying Marion Sweatt admission violated the Eq...