LAST RUSH BEFORE VACATION . . .

The Supreme Court has been busy lately, so keep up:

In U.S. v. American Library Assn, the Justices upheld a federal law -- the Children's Internet Protection Act -- which requires public libraries to install pornography filters on all computers which provide Internet access, as a condition of continuing to receive federal subsidies and grants. They all agreed that restricting children's access to pornography didn't by itself pose a constitutional issue. Rather, the issue was the extent to which over-blocking would infringe upon the First Amendment rights of adult library users. Check out the decision.

In Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, the High Court upheld -- by a 5-4 vote -- the affirmative action policy at U. Michigan's Law School, but invalidated -- by a 6-3 vote -- the affirmative action policy used at U. Michigan's undergraduate school, in which applicants are selected according to the number of points they accrue in the application process, with black, Hispanic and American-Indian applicants automatically receiving 20 points from the get-go (fixed amounts of points are also automatically awarded for things like alumni connections). Check out the Law School and undergraduate decisions.