UC Law Conference To Address
Affirmative Action In Higher Ed

The next step forward in the national debate over affirmative action policies in higher education admissions will likely take place in Cincinnati. Anticipating that development, the University of Cincinnati College of Law will play host on Oct. 5-6 to a gathering of some of the major figures from the controversy.

The college will host "Beyond Bakke: Integration As a Compelling State Interest," a national conference on affirmative action sponsored by the Society of American Law Teachers and the Clinical Legal Educators Association. Much of the focus will be on Grutter v. Bollinger, a district court decision last spring that struck down the affirmative action admission policies of the University of Michigan law school. That case will be heard on appeal later in October in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

"I think this is hugely important," says Verna Williams, UC assistant professor of law who will participate in a moot court at the conference's outset. Williams says that because other courts within the federal districts have ruled differently in recent decisions - including another verdict within the Sixth Circuit that upheld affirmative action admission policies for University of Michigan undergrads - the issue appears ultimately headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, which last addressed affirmative action admission policies in higher education with its landmark Bakke decision in 1978.

"This could be the case that goes to the Supreme Court, in which the court re-examines the vitality of the Bakke decision and whether or not state institutions can continue to use affirmative action to enhance educational opportunities for all their students," says Williams, who herself argued successfully a Title IX case in 1999 before the Supreme Court.

Among those participating in the conference will be the legal team for the student-interveners in the Michigan Law School case, as well as Jeffrey Lehman, dean of the Michigan Law School.

Conference organizers hope to help move the debate away from the 1978 Bakke decision involving policies at the University of California, which was based on a diversity rationale, to an argument focused on the re-segregation of higher education and the continuing segregation of K-12 educational systems.

"Our objectives are to publicize the arguments that have been raised in support of affirmative action in higher education, and particularly those that are being made by the student interveners," says Margaret Montoya, co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers and professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law.

The conference opens at 3 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 5 with a moot court, where the attorneys for the student interveners arguing the Sixth Circuit case later in the month will rehearse in front of a three-member panel that includes Williams. "We want to hit them with the kinds of questions they'll get from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and explore how to make the strongest and most powerful arguments for affirmative action in this context," Williams says.

A lecture is planned for 7 p.m. the same evening from UC College of Law graduate and current Black Lawyers Association of Cincinnati president Fanon Rucker.

On Saturday, a series of four panels will be held along with a wrap-up meeting. Law students and educators from as far away as Hawaii are expected to attend. The Friday evening lecture, in Room 118 of the College of Law, is open to the public.

The topic carries local as well as national significance. "As a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, I am personally as well as professionally concerned about the outcome of this case," says Jack Chin, Rufus King Professor of Law at the UC College of Law, who helped organize the conference. "The subject of this conference is particularly important to the University of Cincinnati. Because we are in the Sixth Circuit, what the court does in the Michigan case could affect us directly."