  Given Justice Powell’s singular opinion, supported by no one else on the Court, and given the drift of Supreme Court decisions on racial preferences since  1978,[23]  the Hopwood court was not outlandish, if a bit presumptuous, in declaring Powell’s holding in Bakke dead. As it happened, Powell’s opinion was far from dead. In the University of Michigan Law School case, Grutter v. Bollinger, eventually decided by the Supreme Court in June 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s lead opinion declared: “today we endorse Justice Powell’s view that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions” (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 [2003], at 330).  Diversity was alive after all. But how it worked its affirmative action elixir remained as unclear in 2003 as it had been in 1978.