{"id":4821,"date":"2025-05-30T19:11:43","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T19:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/?p=4821"},"modified":"2025-08-20T16:00:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:00:30","slug":"treating-each-applicant-as-an-individual-in-students-for-fair-admissions-v-harvard-and-its-key-precedents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/2025\/05\/30\/treating-each-applicant-as-an-individual-in-students-for-fair-admissions-v-harvard-and-its-key-precedents\/","title":{"rendered":"Treating Each Applicant as an Individual in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and its Key Precedents"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This Note argues that the Supreme Court&#8217;s shifting attitude towards race-conscious school admissions can be best understood by making sense of the Court&#8217;s gradually elevated requirements of individuality in school admissions. Specifically, this note argues that (1) treating each applicant as an individual has been a constitutionally necessary, but not constitutionally sufficient, requirement since <em>Bakke<\/em>; (2) the individuality requirement is intricately intertwined with the compelling-interest and narrow-tailoring requirements of strict scrutiny; and (3) race-conscious school admissions survived <em>Bakke<\/em> and <em>Grutter<\/em>, but were overruled in <em>SFFA<\/em> because the <em>SFFA<\/em> Court had such an elevated requirement of individuality that it rendered it impossible for the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard and UNC to pass strict scrutiny. This Note will first introduce the Supreme Court&#8217;s reasoning in deciding <em>SFFA<\/em> as well as <em>Bakke<\/em> and <em>Grutter<\/em>, the two landmark precedents that led to <em>SFFA<\/em>. Then, the author will survey the relevant philosophical texts on individuality and its relationship to stereotype and discrimination. Following that, the author will analyze the Supreme Court&#8217;s decisions in <em>Bakke<\/em>, <em>Grutter<\/em>, and <em>SFFA<\/em> through the lens of individuality, and explain why the Court&#8217;s transformed conceptualization of individuality is the real reason behind the <em>SFFA<\/em> decision to overrule affirmative action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To read this Note, please click here: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/Treating Each Applicant as an Individual in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and its Key Precedents\">Treating Each Applicant as an Individual in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and its Key Precedents<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Note argues that the Supreme Court&#8217;s shifting attitude towards race-conscious school admissions can be best understood by making sense of the Court&#8217;s gradually elevated requirements of individuality in school admissions. Specifically, this note argues that (1) treating each applicant as an individual has been a constitutionally necessary, but not constitutionally sufficient, requirement since Bakke;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,13,694,28,700,46,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-59","category-archives","category-clr-print-volume-110","category-issue","category-issue-3-clr-print-volume-110","category-notes","category-print"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4823,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821\/revisions\/4823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}