ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN -- The Supreme Court finally agreed this week to hear Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger , two lawsuits challenging the use of race in the admissions policies of both the University of Michigan and its law school. The cases have been pegged as candidates for certiorari since they were filed in the 1997, in response to the 5th Circuit's decision in Hopwood v. Texas , which struck down the University of Texas' law school admissions policy. At the law school here in Ann Arbor, where I am enrolled as a first-year student, the attitude is, oddly, ecstatic. Odd because the law school's admissions policy was affirmed in the most recent appellate decision -- and a denial of cert would have secured the policy for several years to come. But it would have been a tenuous security at best, as it has been for the last five years. The stark difference between Hopwood and opinions in other circuits (and between the wings of the circuits themselves) -- not just on the...