A federal judge ruled last week that the University of Michigan's (U-M) use of race in its law school admissions policy is unconstitutional in a legal battle that many speculate will eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 90-page decision released last Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman said that the U-M law school should abandon its current admissions policy, which aims toward achieving a "critical mass" of minority students, and instead strive for "race-neutral" admissions.

"I think Judge Friedman's decision is wrong on the law and wrong on the facts," University of Michigan President Lee C. Bollinger, who was recently on the short list for the Harvard presidency, told the Crimson in an interview in Ann Arbor last week.

In his ruling, Friedman said that the U-M policy over-emphasized race.

"The evidence shows that race is not, as defendants have argued, merely one factor in the admissions process," he wrote.

Friedman also argued that the law school's use of racial criterion was "indistinguishable from a straight quota system."

The ruling directly contradicts a December decision by U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Duggan, which upheld the school's affirmative action program in undergraduate admissions.

But Bollinger is quick to point out that last week's decision does not detract from Duggan's earlier ruling.