Paper Topic:

Supreme court case

Affirmative Action

Affirmative action is a policy or a program of giving preferential treatment to designated groups which seeks to redress discrimination or bias through active measures in education and employment . It is generally advocated as a means to address past or present discrimination or to enhance racial , ethnic , gender , or other diversity

Affirmative action prominently centers on access to education particularly admission to universities and colleges . Race , ethnicity social class , parental attendance of the university in question (legacy admissions , and /or gender are often taken into account when assessing

the applicant 's grades and test scores

The US Supreme Court has decided numerous cases on affirmative action Brown v . Board of Education of Topeka (1954 , is a landmark decision which explicitly outlawed racial segregation of public education facilities (legal establishment of separate government-run schools for blacks and whites , ruling so on the grounds that the doctrine of "separate but equal " public education could never truly provide black Americans with facilities of the same standards available to white Americans . For almost a century , before this case race relations in the US had been dominated by segregation . The plaintiffs asserted that this system of racial separation , while masquerading as providing separate but relatively equal treatment of both white and black Americans instead perpetuated inferior accommodations , services , and treatment for black Americans

Regents of the University of California v . Bakke (1978 , another landmark case barred quota systems in college admissions but affirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action programs giving an advantage to minorities . Justice Powell , speaking for the court , found that quotas insulated minority applicants from competition with the regular applicants and were thus unconstitutional because they discriminated against regular applicants . Powell however stated that universities could use race as a plus factor . He cited the Harvard College Admissions Program which had been d as an amicus curiae as an example of a constitutionally valid affirmative action program which took into account of all of an applicant 's qualities including race in a "holistic review

Hopwood v . Texas (1996 , was the first successful legal challenge to racial preferences in student admissions since Regents of the University of California v . Bakke . In Hopwood , four white plaintiffs who had been rejected from The University of Texas School of Law challenged the institution 's admissions policy on equal protection grounds and prevailed . The Fifth Circuit Court held that "the University of Texas School of Law may not use race as a factor in deciding which applicants to admit in to achieve a diverse student body , to combat the perceived effects of a hostile environment at the law school , to alleviate the law school 's poor reputation in the minority community , or to eliminate any present effects of past discrimination by actors other than the law school " The U .S . Supreme Court denied certiorari , Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , wrote that the issue of the constitutionality of race in admission was "an issue great national importance " however the University was no longer defending the specific admissions...

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