Penn Law faculty comment on Supreme Court Affirmative Action ruling.
“It was a 4-3 decision upholding what the state of the law has been, really, for several decades, which is that universities and colleges have the discretion to take all factors of an individual’s background into account in the admissions decision; as long as we don’t make that a rigid formula or a quota we can look at the whole file. And the court upheld that principle and said that number one: building a diverse and eclectic group of students in the student body is a valid educational interest — something we certainly believe at Penn. Number two: and this is also very important to educational institutions around the country, that one component of academic freedom is that educational institutions have the discretion and decision-making authority to form our own classes of students, and that it not be dictated or micromanaged by five justices in Washington, D.C.”