The New York Times tells us:
President Bush has asked administration lawyers to present him with a brief arguing that the University of Michigan’s programs for using race in admission decisions go too far, officials said today. The officials said Mr. Bush was prepared to have the government file the papers with the Supreme Court on Thursday, a move that would inject the administration into one of the largest affirmative action cases in a generation. But the White House said Mr. Bush had not yet given the final approval to move ahead. And it was unclear how sweeping a stand the administration would take on the fundamental question of whether race may ever be used as a factor in higher-education admissions decisions.
Leaving aside for the moment the politics of the issue, what I find hilarious is the suggestion that Bush decides, on Tuesday, that he wants the Solicitor General’s office to prepare a Supreme Court brief on a constitutional issue of colossal importance. As if legal briefs of this nature grow on trees, rather than being wrung in blood from a staff of lawyers over a period of weeks or months (yes, I’ve written briefs in a day, but not for an appellate court and certainly not on an issue that I expect the U.S. Supreme Court to settle for all time). The article later says that “[o]fficials have been wrestling over the wording of the brief,” which hints at reality. The truth is that the bulk of the brief needs to have been written by now, unless they’ve actually gone to the extraordinary, although I’m sure not unprecedented, step of writing more than one version of the brief.