Big Day: Next Monday... *bump*

The Supreme Court of the United States of America will hear oral arguments on Monday regarding affirmative-action policies that potentially could affect which students are admitted into the most elite institutes of upper education in this country, which often determines lifetime success itself based on the connections gained through the admittance.

The act of admittance into these American universities almost immediately changes one's life, with remunerative consequences potentially coming upon graduation, and the prestigious stigma of being chosen for elite further education touching personal trajectories the minute the news hits home.

Our Court today is composed of graduates -- former admittees themselves -- of the higher tiered schools of the higher education.  Education with the elites of American society -- their children whose lives have not changed so much upon admittance: their parents or grandparents often that privilege of knowing successful uplift through their own hard work -- can elevate intellects via admission to American society's most admired "think tanks".  

There, the best preparation for... well thinking, and devising plans of action to lead society's institution -- are drilled into trainable young minds via collaboration, close study and access to the modern technological version of the Great Books -- the collected wisdom of the past...

Or so the ideal goes.

In practice, American higher education today at its most elite, is designed to comfortably serve America's "leisure class" (the wealthy beyond all belief), and who "gets in" has other youngsters and their families reshaping childhoods, stressing everyone out to "make it" in America...

Strivers v legacies is what it's about. How to measure performance. Who gets in on their own, v who meets the requirements and checks the boxes the way the admissions committees have gamed current rules.  We need Change in how we produce our leadership, even the Court will likely admit that because you know?  They've been there.  Recently.  Educated in elite places like that.

The current Court on Monday will hear arguments that revisit a decision - Grutter --  where the Court came very close to making a legal reality during the early years of the 20th Century.  (If you thought Casey affirmed Roe to the point of creating infallible precedent, you'll likely not have much faith that Grutter and Bakke together will hold the past rulings from the Court during very different social times, in place...)

In Grutter, a now-retired but still-living Justice (Reagan appointee, if it matters; woman too, white, wife/mother) -- who was the Anthony Kennedy "swing voter" of her time -- gave in to the pressure from military leaders, corporate business leaders, and college presidents and provosts and professors, as well as student groups, some say, and put her finger on the scales of justice that allowed racially discriminatory affirmative-action policies to be justified under the law to achieve the policy goals the military, business and university leaders argued were necessary in a free-market democracy.

Monday, tune in if you can.  It's a motley crew on the Court compared to the days of the Grutter decision: two in their 70s; 3 in their 60s; 4 in their 50s...

They came up in very different times, and facts that shape legal arguments that might have swayed earlier Justices might have less truck with the current team.  Not that the law itself -- the legal analysis changes so much, but the facts as presented might be accepted with less weight today, less importance, as Justice Day O'Connor herself wrote, in those earlier years.

So bring on our New Court then.  They were reviled in their first term together, but they stuck together.  They survived.  They kept the drama at a minimum,  just a few veiled words as intellectual minds are wont to do in processing emotions perhaps and properly following procedures, social ones too.

The Court today is currently seven married people with two unmarried; two divorcees, one remarried; parents of children of a previous union, adopted and born to the couple themselves. Raised in love with extended family, as well as biological parents... this is a pretty diverse Court comparing to who's made our decisions up there in the past.

They got "got in" to top notch schools as some point in their legal professions as undergrads, law students, professors and even a college president.  Who decides matters.  Who "gets in" to these schools matters too, so long as we keep them as qualifiers of success in society with lifetime tenure.