WASHINGTON — A large-scale social movement is needed to impact political decisions in a way that makes them more reflective of the will of the American people, Harvard law professor Lani Guinier argued Tuesday during a forum on higher education.
“I don’t think most Americans are happy that they’re closing down the Supreme Court because they want to take over the presidency,” Guinier said at a forum titled, “Race, Class and Community: Democratizing Higher Education in America.”
Guinier made her remarks in response to a question Diverse posed about efforts by Republican lawmakers to stymie President Barack Obama in his efforts to appoint a justice in to the Supreme Court during what remains of his last term in the wake of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
“It’s offensive to think, ‘We’re so great that we need to wait a year before decide who should be an appointee of the Supreme Court,’” Guinier said of Republican lawmakers. “And their goal is to have a ‘4-4’ so that they can’t lose anything,” she said of the fact that an Obama appointee would shift the power balance of the court — 5-4 — against what was once its conservative majority.
She suggested that the need for a movement that could bring attention to issues for a “larger community of people,” but did not explicitly say whether Black Lives Matter fits the bill or not.
“If we can figure out a way to give them a sense of potential power and collaboration with others so that they’re making really important differences in decision-making,” Guinier said.
Guinier — a one–time nominee of President Bill Clinton for assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice — did not wade into the discussion of the pending Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin case that could curtail the use of race in college admissions.
