What are the stakes of Harvard's legal action? Decades of race debate in admissions

"The Supreme Court has been vague about what is OK," said William Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago. "It looks like they say it's O.K. provided it's not too much or too obvious. And then the other problem is that schools have been very secretive about what they are doing exactly. Which means we do not know what the law is exactly, and we do not know if anyone obeys it. "

Legal experts say that the Harvard case could be a factual, university-specific trial. But if it is the subject of an appeal, the Supreme Court could have a chance to review the law on affirmative action. This is the plaintiffs' game plan, Students for Fair Admissions, a group formed by a conservative activist against positive action, Edward Blum. Mr. Blum recruited for the group nearly two dozen American students of Asian descent who were rejected by Harvard.

"It is important to recognize that the fate of the doctrine of positive action and Harvard does not necessarily go in the same direction," said Professor Baude. "The positive action could remain unchanged even if Harvard lost. Challengers have both goals. They both think that what is happening at Harvard is wrong, and they think the whole scheme is bad, and they would like to use this case to prove it. "

S.F.F.A. other fire irons. She also complained to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to challenge race-related confessions but without targeting Americans of Asian descent. His trial is scheduled for the spring and should also take place in the higher courts.

Mr. Blum was the architect of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the last major case of positive action to have been brought to the Supreme Court, that he lost in 2016. But the dissidence of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. in the US case, in which a white woman said that she had been refused because of her race, hinted that discrimination against American students of Asian origin could constitute a fertile ground for a trial.

Ilya Shapiro, a leading member of the libertarian Cato Institute, said that affirmative action could be vulnerable if the complaint were brought to the Supreme Court and whether newly appointed judge Brett M. Kavanaugh followed the judge's example. Chief, John G. Roberts Jr.

"On this issue, John Roberts wrote that the only way to stop discriminating on race is to stop discriminating on race," said Shapiro. "So he decided that racial preferences were inappropriate."