Unlike Professor Trelawney the courts of this country and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission don�t believe that selecting officials can peer into a crystal ball to divine the future performance of candidates on a best-qualified list. Mainly for this reason (I assert), the courts and the Commission have created the �clearly-better qualified� doctrine. Under this doctrine, in the pretext stage of a disparate treatment case, the unsuccessful candidate must prove by a preponderance of the evidence not merely that she was better qualified than the selectee, but also clearly better qualified. So much better qualified in fact that �disparities in curricula vitae are so apparent, as virtually to jump off the page and slap us in the face."    more »