Happy Second Blogiversary

To Domenico Bettinelli of Bettnet.com.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 07/03/03 09:15:07 PM
Categorized as Other.

"Want Diversity? Think Fuzzy"

I can hardly believe I am writing this — but Michael Kinsley makes sense in The Washington Post, June 25:

Admission to a prestige institution such as the University of Michigan or its law school is what computer types call a "binary" decision. It's yes or no. You're in or you're out. There is no partial or halfway admission. The effect of any factor in that decision is also binary. It either changes the result or it doesn't. It makes all the difference or it makes none at all. Those are the only possibilities.

For any individual, the process of turning factors into that yes-or-no decision doesn't matter. Any factor that changes the result has the same impact as if it were an absolute quota of one. It gets you in, or it keeps you out. And this is either right or it is wrong. The process of turning factors into a result doesn't matter here either. In this sense, the moral question is binary too....

The court actually seems to be in denial on this point. Although it forbids explicit racial quotas or mathematical formulas to achieve racial balance, it is happy enough to measure the success of its preferred fuzzier approaches in statistical terms. If a selection system is going to be judged by its success in approximating the results of a mathematical formula, how is it any different from using that formula explicitly? Elsewhere, arguing for the social value of affirmative action, O'Connor's opinion cites dramatic statistics about how few minority students there would be if it were ended. But don't those statistics imply that affirmative action is having an equal-and-opposite effect now? And isn't that good to exactly the extent that ending affirmative action would be bad? And if that extent can be measured and judged using statistics, why is it wrong to achieve the statistical goal through statistical means?

The majority opinion says that its preferred flexible-flier style of affirmative action does "not unduly harm members of any racial group." Well, this depends on what you mean by "unduly," doesn't it? As noted, we're dealing with an all-or-nothing-at-all decision here. Every time affirmative action changes the result, a minority beneficiary benefits by 100 percent and a white person is burdened 100 percent, in the only currency at issue, which is admission to the University of Michigan. This burden may be reasonable or unreasonable, but it is precisely the same size as the burden imposed by the mathematical-formula-style affirmative action that the court finds objectionable....

Finally, the court is confused if it thinks that a subjective judgment full of unquantifiable factors is obviously fairer than a straightforward formula. But confusion seems to be a purposeful strategy. The court's message to universities and other selective, government-financed institutions is: We have fudged this dangerous issue. You should do the same.

See my Layman's Translation of Yesterday's SCOTUS Decisions.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 07/03/03 08:07:50 AM
Categorized as Political.

"Sodomy & the Law"

A good column by Hadley Arkes at NRO yesterday:

.... The case of same-sex marriage looms large as a prospect hovering over these cases on sodomy and gay rights. The courts in Canada have now established same-sex marriage in that country, and the supreme court in Massachusetts seems about to ease the way for that arrangement here, and so the question must arise as to whether other states would be obliged to honor the marriages brought about in these jurisdictions. The understanding firmly established in the laws is that a state need not honor certain kinds of marriages — say, incestuous marriages — if the state has, in its own public policy, a moral rejection of those kinds of marriages.

But that is precisely the prop that is knocked out when the Supreme Court declares, with Justice Kennedy, that it is no longer tenable for a state to regard gay sex as any less legitimate than the sexuality "imprinted in our natures" — the sexuality marked in the presence of gender, and the purpose of begetting. The question is whether the state is on tenable ground when it refuses to recognize any brand of homosexuality as standing on the same plane as sexuality in the literal sense, or as having a claim to nothing less than a "way of life." The eyes of the law may simply be diverted, in a policy of tolerance or indifference, as people do all kinds of things in the privacy of their bedrooms. But if every brand of sexuality is to be regarded on the same plane, equally plausible and legitimate, then it may be untenable for the state to deny that a homosexual union should have any less standing, in the law, than a marriage composed of a man and a woman. And if marriage is detached from the function of begetting, it is hard to see any ground of principle for confining marriage to a "coupling." Indeed, we have now seen the advent of the "polyamorous," a group of people who contend that their loves are not confined to a coupling, but woven together in a larger ensemble of three and four or more. On what ground of principle then would the law refuse to be open to these other, novel forms of marriage?...

(Thanks, Eric.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 07/03/03 08:04:09 AM
Categorized as Political.