Media Contact
Damien Sharp
The Supreme Court handed down two groundbreaking rulings on affirmative action and student loan forgiveness this week.
Robert Hockett, professor of law and public finance at Cornell Law School says, these decisions will aid in restoring the old world of nearly a century ago, when higher education was a privilege enjoyed by the white and the wealthy but few others.
Robert Hockett
Professor of Law
“The Court’s student loan decision is unsurprising relative to other recent decisions handed down by the new conservative supermajority. But is very surprising relative both to longer-term precedent and to the present-day living conditions of a supermajority of American citizens.
“First, notwithstanding its putative adherence to a ‘plain meaning rule’ in interpreting statutes, the conservative supermajority reads the word ‘waive’ altogether out of the HEROES Act that it purports to be construing.
“Second, notwithstanding decades of jurisprudence under the Chevron Doctrine pursuant to which courts defer to executive agencies' reasonably explained interpretations of their own enabling legislation, the conservative supermajority simply dismisses the Department of Education's considered understanding and application of the HEROES Act's waiver provision.
“And finally third, the putative ground given by the conservative supermajority for its cavalier dismissal of the Department's construal of its enabling legislation - namely, that the magnitude of the Department's waiver is larger than those of previous waivers - is nothing short of bizarre in its complete disregard of the simple truth that the pandemic itself, which occasioned the waiver program, was itself more devasting by orders of magnitude than has been any other national calamity since passage of the HEROES Act.
“How the conservative supermajority manages to convince itself that its recent spate of radical decisions undoing the past three quarters of a century is legitimate is anyone's guess. But it's hard not to conjecture that it has something to with both (a) complete contempt for judicial precedent, and (b) a similar contempt for, or sheer ignorance of, the living conditions of the vast majority of Americans in the present era.
“This is as true of the new supermajority's college admissions decision yesterday as it is of its college finance decision today. The combined upshot of these decisions will be in significant measure to restore the old world of nearly a century ago, when higher education was a privilege enjoyed by the white and the wealthy but few others.”
