Noah Feldman, Columnist

The Supreme Court Smiles on Diversity

Policies to right past wrongs are losing constitutional favor. Not affirmative action. It lives in the present.

June 26, 2016 at 2:00 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Educational benefit.
Photographer: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the University of Texas’s race-conscious admissions process leaves affirmative action in higher education as a surviving remnant of the major social policy innovations that accompanied the civil rights movement.

It’s been almost two decades since the court effectively eliminated most minority set-asides in government contracting. And only three years ago, the justices struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which required numerous state jurisdictions to submit to a rigorous Justice Department approval process anytime they wanted to redistrict.