The rhetorical invention of diversity: Supreme Court opinions, public argument, and affirmative action.

• Author: Wagner, Phillip E.

The rhetorical invention of diversity: Supreme Court opinions, public argument, and affirmative action, edited by M. Kelly Carr Lansing, Ml, Michigan State University Press, 2018, pp., $49.95 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-1-61186-284-3

Though decades have passed since the landmark Bakke decision that came to frame much of the discourse on affirmative action in higher education, the embers of that fire are nowhere near cool. Even recently, high-profile cases such as Abigail Fisher's long-running legal battle against the University of Texas-Austin show the opportunistic nature that undergirds much of the white pushback against such policies. This Kairos, ironically enough, also served as a foundation for Bakke, as Justice Lewis F. Powell called upon strategic nuances of the case and the greater sociopolitical context to construct an appeal towards a rhetorical end. These are the arguments of M. Kelly Carr's The Rhetorical Invention of Diversity: Supreme Court Opinions, Public Argument, and Affirmative Action. Carr's work seeks to situate Bakke within the larger domain of race-related public discourse, legal authority, and higher education, using these contextual cues to make sense of Justice Lewis F. Powell's decision-making process.

Carr's text situates the Supreme Court not as an objective legal authority, but as a rhetorical institution, whereby judicial decisions are not isolated from the greater social milieu. Carr argues that Bakke "is a marker for a significant ideological shift from reliance on equality to the celebration of diversity in the consideration of racial inequities" (34). It is here where Carr truly differentiates her approach to this landmark case, providing the reader with sound rhetorical strategy for dismantling the complex yet oft-cited value of "diversity" that emerged saliently with the Bakke decision.

The Rhetorical Invention of Diversity provides a truly rich and dynamic account of Bakke as a collaborative rhetorical invention. Upon providing a simple and accessible reminder of Bakke's key tenants in the introduction, Carr propels into a well-anchored critique of assumedly objective jurisprudence, dispelling naive notions of legal discourse as rhetorics of certainty; instead, she problematizes Bakke by framing the case in terms of rhetorical invention and situating deliberation within the social and political options used by Powell and colleagues to make sense of the case for affirmative action. Throughout, Carr seeks to...