A Black and White Case: How Affirmative Action Survived Its Greatest Legal Challenge

In the late 1990s, two lawsuits by white applicants who had been rejected by the University of Michigan began working their way through the federal court system, aimed at the abolition of racial preferences in college admissions. The stakes were high, the constitutional questions profound, the politics and emotions explosive. It was soon evident that the matter was headed for the highest court in the land, but there all clarity ended.

To the plaintiffs and the feisty public-interest law fir...