To the Editor:
Justice John Paul Stevens, you note correctly in
your editorial (“Justice
Stevens,” April 10), took a conservative position on affirmative
action in the seminal Bakke case. His position was conservative in the
very honorable sense, of which he remained proud, that it sought to
restrict the court to its proper business: applying settled law to known
facts.
In that case the University of California freely admitted
that (with honorable motives, of course) it had discriminated among
applicants to the medical school at Davis on grounds of race. But Title
VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically forbids discrimination
on grounds of race under “any program or activity receiving federal
financial assistance.”
What the University of California had been
doing, Justice Stevens pointed out forcefully, violated a distinct
statutory prohibition.
He was dead right, of course. Justice
Stevens preserved in that case, as he always proudly sought to do, the
conservative role of a judge: applying the law impartially to the facts.
Carl
Cohen
Ann Arbor, Mich., April 10, 2010
The writer
is a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 