With the death of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whom we greatly admired, America loses a jurist who turned out to be  a constitutional prophet. Writing in 2003 for the majority in Grutter v. Bollinger, she upheld affirmative action. Yet the court, she said, “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.” Twenty years later, cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina put paid to that.