Bowen’s Legacy

I believe that I am responsible for what you call the “famous footnote” in Justice Lewis Powell’s opinion in Bakke citing Bill Bowen’s article about affirmative action in the Princeton Alumni Weekly. I sent that article to my law school classmate and friend Bob Litt, who was at the time clerking for Justice Potter Stewart, telling him that while I did not know whom Bakke would be assigned to, the article was 1) by a good economist 2) who was also the president of a good, small liberal-arts college and 3) right.

When Tom Wright ’62 wrote in PAW wondering how the Supreme Court came to read PAW, I thought I knew. Bill Bowen was a good economist who understood the importance of discretion and freedom in admission decisions.