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Asking, "Who can differentiate between those who belong and those who do not?" he continued: "The majority of blacks are admitted to the law school because of discrimination, and because of this policy all are tarred as undeserving. This problem of stigma does not depend on determinacy as to whether those stigmatized are actually the `beneficiaries' of racial discrimination. When blacks take positions in the highest places of government, industry or academia, it is an open question today whether their skin color played a part in their advancement."

He added, "The question itself is the stigma — because either racial discrimination did play a role, in which case the person may be deemed `otherwise unqualified,' or it did not, in which case asking the question itself unfairly marks those blacks who would succeed without discrimination."

If Michigan's law school cannot find a way to be both selective and racially inclusive, it should be "forced to choose" one path or the other, this Yale graduate asserted, adding: "Michigan has no compelling interest in having a law school at all, much less an elite one."

As the dust settled from Monday's decisions, the Thomas opinion drew much interest and comment.

"In this opinion is the entire panoply of the contradictions this country has about race," said Goodwin Liu, a lawyer here whose law review article in support of affirmative action was cited on Monday in an opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Roger Pilon, vice president for legal affairs of the libertarian Cato Institute and long an admirer of Justice Thomas, said that "without question, he is speaking from the context of someone who's pulled himself up by the bootstraps." In an interview, Mr. Pilon added: "It may seem incomprehensible to liberal do-gooders that there are people who want to make it on their own."

Justice Thomas, whose 55th birthday was Monday, is the youngest member of the court by nine years, the only justice who plausibly might still be on the court 25 years from now, by which time, according to Justice O'Connor's opinion, affirmative action should fade into history.

For some, the context may be substantially different if the court is still grappling with the issue then. But it is scarcely imaginable that the author of Monday's dissenting opinion would change the perspective with which his life story has endowed him.