Defendant Legal Reasoning Brief/Opinion

Defendant Legal Reasoning Brief/Opinion
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Defendant Legal Reasoning Brief/Opinion
Introduction
The court largely considered the objections that was raised by the petitioner, and decided that justice had to be embraced strongly by not allowing race to be a factor to consider in admitting students at universities and schools of graduate. The court ruled out that there must be a limitation on considering race in admission. However, history indicates that any program of admission in universities take in to account some factors that are pre-dominant to qualify an applicant’s eligibility for enrollment into a program, so long as the program meets the judiciary’s strict test of scrutiny (Jentz, 2008). Such pre-dominant factors include race. The University of Texas (UT) at Austin made the issue of race to be an individual consideration for those applicants who are not admitted to those states that are satisfied according to the law (Cramton & Carrington 2006).
Thesis Statement: Is there a clearly articulated statement of the issues and the final decision? (These may be in separate sections, but for each issue there must be one). 20 pts
Statements of the issue include:
UT and its mission
UT was formed in 1883 with a primary mission of creating a first class university. For over 130 years, it has been considered Texas public university. The University has had a noble kind of history, and for over 70 years of UT existence, it has been segregated on race by the law. The university did not admit African Americans, until in 1950, after the court’s decision that Heman Sweatt must be included in law school of UT despite of his race (Porter, 2004).
Effort to promote diversity at UT
In efforts to appreciate the influential benefits of a body of diverse students in relation to higher education, both the state of Texas and UT have implemented critical procedures to help in promoting diversity at the university. Such procedures include:
UT used race and academic index to select students before 1996. The academic index was based on the ranks of the class of student’s secondary school, curriculum of the applicant’s secondary school and test scores that are standardized. Race was the major factor for an applicant before the admission committee could review nonminority and minority applicants, for admission.
The Hopwood v. Texas (1996) case: The case involved a white applicant Cheryl Hopwood whose admission was denied in favor of the minorities even though she had better grades than them. She sued Texas Law School which aimed to increase the enrollment of the minority students to the detriment of whites. The U.S. Court of Appeals held that the 14th Amendment does not permit this kind of discrimination. The court however concluded that the law school may or may not use race as a factor in admission. The reasoning was that since the society was racially divided, it is right that a past inj...