This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution, and today we're discussing two Supreme Court cases on affirmative action.

I'm your host Tom Church, and I'm joined by the Libertarian Professor Richard Epstein.

Here at Hoover, Richard is the

Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow. He's the Lawrence A. Tish Professor of

Law at NYU and he's also a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. Now today Richard we're discussing the

Supreme Court's new ruling on affirmative action in university admissions.

University admissions something that I think you actually have some background in history and having been a professor for a decade or two right

55 years alas

That's incredible well Richard we got two opinions today, 63 and 62, effectively ending the consideration of race in college applications. So the cases were regarding Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, so you've got a private and a public university. And Chief Justice Roberts writing the majority opinion wrote, students must be treated based on his or

or horror experiences as an individual, not

on the basis of race.

Now, the reaction to these rulings

has been, I think, what you'd expect, some on some on the right pretty happy some of the left not so much so I'd like to know Richard

You know give us a baseline here. This is not the first affirmative action case that's been decided for the Supreme Court. Where did this, how

is this evolved over time? Well it's evolved very greatly. First of all, let me sort of

of state my position, which is I'm sort of in the middle. And the way I say it facetiously is I want to run the

programs otherwise I don't want to have them. And the point is there are many

complicated tradeoffs that are involved that require sensitive people at the helm.

And the great difficulty that I think we have in trying to come to a consensus

is the Justice Roberts position is not at all,

and the other side is full-stream ahead,

and there's nobody who seems to be in the middle saying yes it's a good but it's traded off against other goods now how does this all begin well and actually begins a long time ago with the adoption of the Equal Protection Clause in 1868.

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