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I am deeply honored to be here today. There is, of course, an element of homecoming in returning here to the school and the people with whom I spent so many good years. It is especially affecting to be invited back to give the Owen J. Roberts Lecture. The Supreme Court as an institution was very important to Owen J. Roberts,' and I have chosen to speak on that subject. I shall focus on a group of cases dealing with the constitutionality of race-conscious governmental affirmative action, sometimes called "reverse discrimination." But my emphasis is not upon the substantive results; rather it is upon the Court as an institution in American society, and upon the judicial techniques of that institution in dealing with this difficult constitutional and social issue. It has often been noted that the Supreme Court stands at the intersection of principle and politics. On the one hand, its power and its function are rationalized by its obligation to decide in terms of principle. This implies, at least, that the Court must be able to justify its results in terms of principle. On the other hand, the issues posed involve broad societal problems, and the decisions of the Court have an impact that the Justices cannot ignore (and probably should not if they could). The demands of a wise or politic result may be in tension with the dictates of principle. The issue of the constitutionality of affirmative action poses in particularly intense form one instance of that conjuncture. The issue, and the Court's modes of dealing with it, are not typi-

The Uses of Ambivalence: Reflections on the Supreme Court and the Constitutionality of Affirmative Action