A Hereditary Perk the Founding Fathers Failed to Anticipate

Legacy admissions may be elitist, but they're not illegal.

Legacy preferences in college admissions -- the nepotistic advantages given to the children of alumni -- are indefensible, of course.

President Bush, who should know, has called for their abolition. John Edwards has written that they are "something out of an aristocracy, not our democracy."

The usual justification for legacy preferences is candidly cynical: they generate contributions from alumni. That crass bargain seems a poor substitute for the usual considerations in admissions decisions, like merit and diversity. But private universities are certainly entitled to trade money for principle.

Public universities, which are part of state and city governments, may be another matter. Why in the world should the government be allowed to discriminate based on heredity?

But maybe there is another way to think about the issue. In a fascinating and provocative article published recently in the Washington University Law Review, Carlton F. W. Larson, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, argued that the Constitution prohibited legacy preferences at public universities through its nobility clauses.

Its what? The Constitution, in separate clauses, bars the federal government and the states from granting titles of nobility. The clauses have not been the subject of much litigation, but they do embody a principle the Constitution's framers thought absolutely fundamental to the ideals of the American revolution.

"Legal distinctions, titles, powers and privileges," John Adams wrote in 1788, "are not hereditary."...

•	A Hereditary Perk the Founding Fathers Failed to Anticipate Sidebar The New York Times, Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008 Byline: Adam Liptak, Sidebar column