The Roberts Supreme Court, as the Supreme Court voted on 29 June 2005, has been and remains a testament to the University of North Carolina, an institution worthy of higher education

It was expected that the highest US court would end race-conscious admissions to universities. Nevertheless, when it came, on 29 June, the verdict shook many in academia, as well as the three Supreme Court justices who voted against the decision. The majority pulls the ripcord and announces that colorblindness for all is legal. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of two to issue separate dissenting opinions on the verdict.

Malta still has its charms 11 years later. The term that just ended must have been a torment for the chief. The court’s popularity has plunged to record lows; its members bicker on and off the bench; calls for the court to be packed are commonplace. Such circumstances would pain any chief justice, this one more than most. From the start of his tenure in 2005, he has painted himself as an institutionalist whose paramount concern is the court’s integrity. He conducts himself in a manner that’s decorous and almost regal, as he speaks of moderation and judicial minimalism. He keeps a sovereign’s distance from modern life. In 1867, in a classic book on the English constitution, Walter Bagehot wrote that in times of change, “the most imposing institutions of mankind” maintain influence by demonstrating an “inherent dignity.” It is ironic, perhaps bitterly so, that a collapse in public esteem has become a hallmark of the Roberts court. The institution has been worthy of reverence in the past.

Harvard University, a private institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the public University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment by considering race along with other factors, as reported by Nature. The decision deprives universities of a crucial tool in the ongoing struggle to establish more-diverse and more-equitable educational environments.

The institutions need to find innovative and alternative ways of creating a more diverse academic environment. This is crucial for moral and ethical reasons because it shows that greater diversity improves all students’ education, and leads to increased innovation, which benefits all society.

Race-conscious policies, also known as affirmative action, were initially established to redress generations of harm that racism had caused to Black people in the United States. They were created after the Supreme Court’s ruling to desegregate schools. Some white-majority communities fought to maintain segregation. The Little Rock Nine were the first black teenagers to be admitted to a mostly white school in 1957 and the military escort was needed.

Some people claim that the opportunities that students are granted are inherently inferior, due to the fact that educational achievement is based on grades and test scores. For example, schools that serve predominantly Black and Hispanic communities can get less funding than those that serve white communities. When researchers modelled the effect of family income on people taking the SAT college-admission test, the negative impacts of low income and poverty on tests scores were amplified for Black students1.