WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court preserved affirmative action in university admissions on June 23 by a one-vote margin but with a forceful endorsement of the role of racial diversity on campus in achieving a more equal society.

“In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visiblyto talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in her 5-4 majority opinion upholding the University of Michigan’s consideration of race for admission to its law school.

At the same time, by a vote of 6-3, and with O’Connor in the majority as well, the court invalidated the same university’s affirmative action program for admission to its undergraduate college. The difference was in the details. As a result, the pair of decisions --- the court’s first in a generation to address race in university admissions --- provided a roadmap for taking race into account without running afoul of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.

The law school engages in a “highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant’s file” in which race counts as a factor but is not used in a “mechanical way,” O’Connor said.

For that reason, she said, it was consistent with Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.’s controlling opinion in the Bakke case in 1978, which permitted the use of race as one “plus factor” among others.

The result of the rulings was that Powell’s solitary view that there was a “compelling state interest” in racial diversity, a position that had appeared undermined by the court’s subsequent equal protection rulings in other contexts and that some lower federal courts had boldly repudiated, has now been endorsed by five justices and placed on a stronger footing than ever before.

The University of Michigan case was easily the most anticipated ruling of the court’s term, attracting attention from university presidents, corporate executives and interest groups across the political spectrum.

President Bush had personally announced in a televised address in January that his administration was seeking to have the university’s affirmative action policies declared unconstitutional.

(By Permission, The New York Times)