The United Kingdom has a hereditary monarchy and a hereditary aristocracy, but it has strong norms against nepotism in education and the workplace. By odd contrast, the U.S. is a republic, a nation founded on anti-hereditary principles, where nepotism is not only permitted but codified—most obviously in the practice of legacy preferences in college admissions. This American anachronism may be on its way out. Johns Hopkins abandoned it in 2014, reducing the percentage of legacy students from 13 to 4 percent. “Legacy preference is immobility written as policy, preserving for children the same advantages enjoyed by their parents. It embodies in stark and indefensible terms inherited privilege in higher education,” Hopkins President Ron Daniels has written. In 2021, Amherst College followed suit. Lawmakers are starting to move against legacy admissions too. A bill introduced into Congress in March 2022 would prohibit colleges that get federal money from giving an advantage to legacy applicants. A bill has been introduced in the New York Assembly and Senate that would ban the practice in both public and private colleges in the state. A similar bill is being considered in Connecticut. Colorado banned legacies in public colleges last year. These recent efforts, however, are not the first time lawmakers have made a run at legacy preferences. In 2003, Senator Edward Kennedy proposed requiring colleges in receipt of federal funds to publish data on the economic and racial composition of their legacy admits. His bill was defeated. Things may be different this time around, but we should not be too sure. Powerful vested interests are at work here. They include those of the well-connected alums of these colleges, who are rather inclined toward a policy that will give their children a better chance of following in their footsteps. Support for both legacy and donor preferences rises with household income, according to a USA Today poll. Many upper-middle-class parents feel little compunction about pulling every string possible to get their offspring a place at a prestigious college, even if that means elbowing out a more qualified but less fortunate applicant. The prevailing norm in the U.S. is that parents should do everything possible to help their children get ahead of others. Few feel any shame in sending their children to expensive private K–12 schools or providing internship opportunities to friends and family. Even many parents who profess a desire for a fairer society appreciate that legacy applicants get an admission bump equivalent to an extra 160 points on their SAT. Parental interest is often seen as an unalloyed virtue. Blood is thicker than justice.