In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Suing Alma Mater: Higher Education and the Courts by Michael A. Olivas
  • Joy Blanchard
Michael A. Olivas. Suing Alma Mater: Higher Education and the Courts. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. 221 pp. Paperback: $32.95. ISBN–13: 978–1421409238.

From disputes regarding faculty free-speech rights to challenges over the distribution of funding for student organizations, the increasing legalization on college and university campuses portends to be a continuous and universal driving force in higher education. In this, his 15th book, Michael A. Olivas, William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law at the University of Houston Law Center and director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance, utilized a case-study approach to examine some of the key U.S. Supreme Court, state, and circuit-level decisions that stand to most greatly influence higher education in the immediate future. More narrowly, Olivas focused on cases pertaining to academic freedom and faculty issues, affirmative action and access in admissions, and employment discrimination.

Overall the book is well organized, beginning with a primer on antecedents of judicial involvement in higher education (e.g., the noted Dartmouth College v. Woodward case that settled the dichotomy of public and private institutions). The content is useful and accessible for legal scholars and the layperson alike. Olivas employed an exhaustive methodology in deciding which cases to include and gives a thorough legal-historical treatment of each. He also provides rich “behind-the-scenes” descriptions of the cast of characters (e.g., attorneys, advocates, judges, and campus administrators)—a unique angle typically unseen in legal literature and wholly unavailable by reading case law by itself.

What was integral to the richness of Olivas’s analysis was his ability to draw on his personal involvement in some of the litigation, including his work with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Board, his key role in drafting and lobbying for the Texas Top Ten Percent Plan law, and his service on the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Litigation Committee.

A large portion of Olivas’s focus hinges on the assertion that the U.S. Constitution, particularly the First and 14th Amendments, has in recent times been utilized to transform higher education policy and practice. With the anticipated Fisher v. University of Texas decision looming at the time of this book’s publication, Olivas aptly examined its “direct predecessor” (p. 55), United States v. Fordice by knitting the common legal strands between de jure segregation and affirmative action in higher education admissions. The decision in this case called for the elimination of the dual system of higher education operating in Mississippi into the 1990s, particularly as it was achieved using standardized test scores to prohibit African Americans from entering the state’s flagship institutions. (In an appendix Olivas thoroughly traces the history of this litigation and its numerous iterations, as it made its way to the Supreme Court and back down the appellate circuit.)

An example of what makes this book salient to higher education scholars, as well as policy-makers and administrators, is Olivas’s description of the social and cultural forces occurring in the judicial system at the time of Fordice and how this moment in jurisprudence would later intersect with the issues tested in Grutter v. Bollinger and Fisher.

To segue from desegregation to affirmative action, Olivas next examined the Fifth Circuit decision, Hopwood v. Texas. Olivas artfully and astutely interwove his analysis of this case with a broader [End Page 403] examination of the politics of race that had been used to grant greater access to higher education (or in this case, to stem the tide). He underscored the effects this decision had, not just on race-based admissions in Texas, but also on other otherwise legal race-based programs, like scholarships: “The carefully nuanced Powell opinion [from the earlier and controlling 1978 Supreme Court decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke] has proven surprisingly resilient and supple over the intervening decades, even with the attempts at revisionism by Fifth Circuit judges and unyielding conservative purposive organizations that characterize [W]hites as hapless victims” (p. 87).

Tracing the effects of Hopwood to...

pdf

Share