Crisis Convergence

Authors

Sarah Medina Camiscoli

Publication Date

8-31-2025

Abstract

Progressive jurists and legal scholars have called the Supreme Court’s doctrine of colorblind constitutionalism that dismantled affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard (SFFA) a crisis for constitutional democracy. However, scholars have not yet tended to students, particularly students mobilized for racial justice, to understand their interpretation of this race-evasive ideology and what insights those mobilized students might offer in this pivotal moment. Given the fact that a small coalition of dissenting conservative jurists, scholars, and mobilized students—the Federalist Society—spent decades crafting the doctrine, scholarship, and resources that drive colorblind constitutionalism and originalist doctrine, it seems that one way out of this crisis would be for progressive scholars to pursue a similar approach. This Essay intervenes by describing how mobilized students have demanded race-conscious laws despite the SFFA majority’s race-evasive ruling, highlighting where those demands converge with the interests of progressive jurists and legal scholars working to protect race-conscious constitutionalism. To do so, this Essay provides a qualitative empirical study identifying converging interests in the SFFA dissenting opinions, the legal scholarship criticizing the SFFA opinion, and the grassroots student campaigns demanding race-conscious laws in the wake of SFFA. The Essay introduces the concept of “crisis convergence” to describe the common interests and values at the intersection of constitutional change, racial justice, and education. Crisis convergence builds on critical race theorist Derrick Bell’s concept of interest convergence and divergence—the idea that Black communities win constitutional change, particularly in the realm of education, only when their interests converge with those of their privileged, white counterparts. This concept helps explain why mobilized students of color and progressive legal scholars should leverage their common ground to develop a race-conscious, rebellious constitutionalism to turn the tides of conservative backlash. The Essay concludes that some of the largest constituencies of mobilized students share a broad convergence point with the SFFA dissent on the pursuit of the self-determination of racially isolated students of color, but also that those same students diverge from progressive scholars on belonging as a race-conscious end. Both the convergence and divergence present helpful insights for progressive scholars to begin to co-construct progressive constitutional theory with broad-based support from impacted students and progressive jurists.

Recommended Citation

Sarah Medina Camiscoli, Crisis Convergence, 120 Nw. U. L. Rev. 5 (2025).
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/nulr/vol120/iss1/2