Undoubtedly there will be plenty of comments about yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on the Louisville and Seattle cases.

In reading through Inside Higher Ed’s story on the decision, I was captivated by the comments of Spelman College president Beverly Tatum, who said, “I really think we are in danger of moving backwards in our society.”

In other words, it’s supposedly a social advance if we confer preferences on some people due to their background, while downplaying the importance of individual abilities.

That brought to mind the statement of the British historian Sir Henry Sumner Maine, who argued that the history of social progress entailed the move away from relationships based on status and toward relationships based on contract. In medieval societies, he observed, what you got depended on your social status (nobility, commoner, serf…) and it was an immense step forward when instead people’s success came to depend on their contracts with others, since contracts were based not on who your ancestor were, but on what you could do.

The advocates of “affirmative action” are implicitly saying that he had it wrong. They think that it’s better — at least when it comes to college admissions — to rely on status.

Tatum went on to take a shot at Ward Connerly, saying that states must be told that “they are shooting themselves in the foot when they ban affirmative action.” She then wonders why any “minority” professional (such as her son) would want a career in a state like Michigan that had rejected affirmative action.

That’s remarkably illogical. Why on earth would anyone decide against pursuing a career in a state simply because it has a law against preferences? It makes no more sense for a “minority” (will people ever get away from groupthink?) individual to decide against working in a state because of a ban on racial preferences than it would for a “non-minority” individual to decide against working in a state that allows and encourages racial preferences. Where you can do the best on your own abilities — contract — is the rational criterion.