The first time the Supreme Court upheld the use of affirmative action in college admissions, nearly 45 years ago, the justices spent months strategizing, forming back-channel alliances and trading passionate pleas up until the final days of negotiations.
Then, just days before the June 1978 decision was released, one justice wrote in a private account, “all hell broke loose.”
That hard-fought precedent in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke is the touchstone for two cases to be argued next week on admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. Today’s reconstituted conservative court appears on the cusp of reversing the landmark that has let colleges consider students’ race in admissions, expanding opportunities for Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities for more than four decades.
Private papers of deceased justices, including the first Black justice, Thurgood Marshall, reveal the tactics among the nine that produced the 1978 decision and how competing factions tried to steer the outcome.
