Manhattan Institute senior fellow Ilya Shapiro comments on Supreme Court oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard:

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Ilya Shapiro comments on Supreme Court oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard:

"We didn't fight the Civil War over oboe players." With that frustrated retort to an attempt by Harvard's lawyer to justify using race in higher-education admissions, Chief Justice Roberts illuminated the disingenuous paradoxes at the heart of affirmative action. On one hand, race is only one of many factors that colleges consider under a "holistic" approach—and never determinative (except in cases as rare as the orchestra's need for an oboe player). On the other, if race can't be used, the number of black students would plummet. On one hand, we're supposed to be moving toward a sunsetting of racial preferences (the 2003 Grutter case said 25 years). On the other, neither UNC's nor Harvard's lawyer was able to identify a metric that would obviate them and university leaders deny that an end point is possible. Today's marathon argument session shows that the time has come to end the decades-long tinkering with how much admissions officers are allowed to judge applicants based on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character and their academic merit. Thankfully, Chief Justice Roberts appears to be the deciding vote in these cases and he's on the side of legal equality rather than nebulous considerations of "equity" and divisive racial spoils. Come June, the Court will help promote national unity and equal opportunity against the racialist balkanizers.

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. Watch his recent appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight here. For media inquiries and broadcast invitations, please contact press officer Nicolas Abouchedid at nabouchedid@manhattan-institute.org