The University of Michigan Cases: Social Scientific Studies of Diversity and Fairness

Abstract

In 1997, the then-president of the University of Michigan, Lee Bollinger, was named as a defendant in two lawsuits brought in federal district court. The College of Literature, Science and Arts had denied admission to Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hammacher, two White residents of Michigan. The applicants claimed that the University’s race-sensitive admissions policy had deprived them of their constitutional and statutory rights. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan Law School had denied admission to another White applicant, Barbara Grutter, and she too claimed reverse discrimination. How could the University defend itself? American jurisprudence is built around the concept of stare decisis: Precedent matters. It is helpful to an organization to be able to argue that its behaviors conform to and promote principles that the Court has explicitly endorsed in prior rulings. In American courts of law, as in the court of public opinion, a successful defense also requires that the defendant construct a cogent and coherent story about its behaviors and intentions. Increasingly, compelling stories must show that they are consistent not only with prevailing moral values but also with accepted social scientific data. Ever since the Supreme Court acknowledged in Brown v. Board of Education that social scientific studies have a legitimate role to play in its reasoning, lawyers have increasingly, and with varying degrees of success, called on social scientists to provide expert testimony. Social scientific data have made their way into public debates about policy and about law as well (Smith & Crosby, in press). Three questions thus faced the University of Michigan as it constructed a defense of race-sensitive admissions policies. First, could it articulate a coherent story to describe both its intentions and its actions? Second, could it link that story to established legal principles? Third, could it bring forward social scientific data to support its claims and could it refute social scientific data put forward by the other side? At least two different avenues lay open to the University as it set about to find answers and to construct a defense (Lehman, 2004; Stohr, 2004). It could decide to follow the road that led to the 1954 Brown victory for civil rights, emphasizing that, in view of the present consequences of historical discrimination,