InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies

The landmark rulings in the University of Michigan’s Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger cases provide an important, albeit lukewarm, endorsement of race-conscious affirmative action admissions—however, not without first striking down mechanistic practices. In the months leading up to the Supreme Court’s rulings, affirmative action proponents and opponents submitted their arguments in the form of amicus curiae or “friend of the court” briefs. Utilizing a critical race framework, this paper discusses how critics employed strategic rhetorical tactics in their amicus briefs to refute race-conscious affirmative action policies and promote the status quo. More specifically, this paper focuses on how critics of affirmative action utilized a normative language of preference to recast “race-conscious” social policies as nothing more than “race-preferences.”