Adequacy and the Public Rights Model of the Class Action After Gratz v. Bollinger

Abstract

The day after the Supreme Court's decision in Gratz v. Bollinger, newspapers hailed it as a defining moment in the history of affirmative action. The New York Times reported that, along with its companion case, Grutter v. Bollinger, Gratz "provided a blueprint for taking race into account without running afoul of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection." The Chicago Tribune called the pair of cases the "most significant and wide-ranging affirmative action rulings in a generation. And the Los Angeles Times questioned whether formulaic admissions systems could continue at all in light of the Court's invalidation of a race-based point system.