| 来源类型 | Article
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| 规范类型 | 评论
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| Inside Expert: Constitutional Conservative |
| Eli Lehrer; karina-rollins
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| 发表日期 | 2003-05-15
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| 出版年 | 2003
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| 语种 | 英语
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| 摘要 | If the Supreme Court uses two current cases against the University of Michigan to overturn the use of racial preferences in college admissions, Americans will have Michael Greve to thank. As a founder of the Center for Individual Rights, Greve led the initial litigation in both cases. Born in Germany and the holder of a law degree and a doctorate from Cornell University, Greve currently heads an AEI project that seeks to protect American federalism. He spoke with TAE senior editors Eli Lehrer and Karina Rollins.
TAE: Are racial preferences at public universities Constitutional?
GREVE: No, they are not. The 14th Amendment presupposes racial neutrality. The Constitution is colorblind. Conflicts along racial lines are more pernicious than any other imaginable division. The only baseline on which everyone can agree is one of absolute, uncompromising racial neutrality.
TAE: Courts haven’t upheld racial preferences in decades. Why do they persist?
GREVE: Courts have also never decisively prohibited them, and that creates all sorts of room for political infighting. An awful lot of people crowded into the lifeboat of preferences. It started out about blacks, then, in order to sustain itself, the system mushroomed and crowded additional favored constituencies under the principle of compensatory preference.
TAE: What do you think the chances are of the Supreme Court finally making a decisive statement on racial preferences in the University of Michigan case?
GREVE: I think it’s a foregone conclusion that the University of Michigan will lose both cases. I don’t see any way to save the university’s position. My personal hope is that the Supreme Court will recognize the need for a clear conceptual rule. It has to realize that the specific mechanics of the system don’t matter; the only way to get beyond race is to…well…get beyond it.
TAE: The Bush administration’s brief in the Michigan case argues against the university’s racial preference scheme, but takes for granted that diversity is a good thing. Are the Bushies not going far enough?
GREVE: They take an intellectually incoherent position. There are a million ways to get racial diversity without discriminating. You could simply have a lottery. The result would be that the University of Texas Law School, for example, would no longer be number 12 in the country, it would be maybe number 45. Do universities love diversity so much they are willing to surrender their elite status to achieve it? I don’t think so. They prefer to use racial discrimination and quotas so they can have it both ways. That’s why I think the claim that diversity is a “compelling interest,” is insincere.
TAE: How would you rate the Bush administration’s general record on federalism–respecting the rights of states, and keeping a balance between national and local governmental power?
GREVE: C-. Just short of destructive. There’s this abomination of an education bill, which is just the pits. And there’s been a complete lack of imagination as to how mandates might be lifted from the states to help alleviate their current fiscal problems. The answer isn’t for the feds to give the states more money.
TAE: During the 1950s and ’60s segregationists used the rhetoric of states’ rights. This gave federalism a bad name. How can the image of federalism be rehabilitated?
GREVE: First, we need to stop talking about states’ rights. The idea that federalism empowers states is a misconception. Federalism puts the states under competitive pressures. Once you conceptualize it from that vantage point you see that federalism doesn’t consist of giving states the right to trample on their own people.
TAE: So how does this philosophy you’ve just articulated apply to the tobacco settlement? What’s wrong with the settlement?
GREVE: It’s emblematic of many things that have gone wrong in recent American federalism. The tobacco deal granted some states permission to exploit their sister states. In the end, no state can opt out.
TAE: Many Americans believe that trial lawyers have become too powerful. What are some concrete achievable steps to reign in the power of trial lawyers?
GREVE: Trial lawyers take what the system gives them. The problem is that today’s system gives them too much. The present Supreme Court is not willing to rebuild the Constitutional protections that stopped this.
TAE: You live here and defend the U.S. Constitution, but you’re not a U.S. citizen. Why?
GREVE: I’m a refugee from the German welfare state. But I loathe the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service bureaucracy. That’s all there is to it. If I could become a citizen by filling out a form on the Internet I would do so in a second. |
| 主题 | Uncategorized
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| 标签 | US Constitution
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| URL | https://www.aei.org/articles/inside-expert-constitutional-conservative/
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| 来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States)
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| 资源类型 | 智库出版物
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| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/238596
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推荐引用方式
GB/T 7714 |
Eli Lehrer,karina-rollins. Inside Expert: Constitutional Conservative. 2003.
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