Word: amicus
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Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor of Law and an expert on affirmative action who authored an amicus curiae brief for University of California Regents vs. Allan Bakke, says he is critical of Harvard for preferring advantaged minority students over the disadvantaged. "I do think there's a pool of disadvantaged students out there," he says, adding that "if these admissions people would only get off their butts, they would find a different result...
From the anti-Bakke side, the undecided or unsure have also heard two lines, both putting the U.C. Davis plan within the context of the larger struggle for affirmative action, but on two different emotional levels. At the legalistic level, advocates like Daniel Steiner '54, who filed Harvard's amicus curiae brief on the case with the Supreme Court, argue that it is important not to rule against the U.C. Davis program as a quota system because it is still early enough in the affirmative action game so that individual admissions committees deserve some elbow room in working out their...
...have grown to appreciate more and more over the past decade that other factors--race, geographical location, economic status-must be taken into account, and not just for the sake of "diversity" (although, disappointingly enough, this is the chief rationale for considering these factors that Harvard gives in its amicus curiae brief on the Bakke case). A strong argument can be made for the usefulness of these non-numerical factors in predicting an applicant's motivation and potential for excellence, as well. As former Justice William O. Douglas put it in his dissent from the Supreme Court's majority decision...
...findings of the trial court leave unresolved serious questions concerning operation of the special admissions program at Davis in 1973 and 1974," the amicus curiae brief by the United States Justice Department reads, "The trial court addressed its findings to the question whether the special admission program employed race in some manner; it did not address the question, which we believe is highly significant, of how race was used...
...amicus brief, the Antioch School of Law states "race, like other factors cited by the court as pertinent in interpreting test scores--socio-economic background, educational opportunities, etc.--is a factor bearing directly on the interpretation of test scores, grades and other evidence. To insist that the admission process must rely exclusively on racially neutral criteria and must exclude consideration of race in the interpretation of data is in fact to require discrimination on account of race...