Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law

by Randall Kennedy

  7. Brief for Plaintiff in Error, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Supreme Court of the United States, Philip B. Kurland, Gerhard Casper, eds., Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law, Volume 13, (1975), 46.

  8. Quoted in Kull, The Color-Blind Constitution, 62.

  9. Pace v. Alabama, 106 U.S. 583 (1883).

  10. See, e.g., Burns v. State, 48 Ala. 195 (1872) (invalidating Alabama miscegenation law). See, generally, Peter Wallenstein, Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and the Law—An American History (2002), 73.

  11. On the status of racial distinctions in state and federal statutes around the time of the framing and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment see Randall Kennedy, Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage Identity, and Adoption (2003), 249–54; Andrew Kull, The Color-Blind Constitution (1994); Stephen A. Siegel, “The Federal Government’s Power to Enact Color-Conscious Laws: An Originalist Inquiry,” Northwestern University Law Review 92 (1998): 478; Jed Rubenfeld, “Affirmative Action,” Yale Law Journal 107 (1997): 427; Micheal W. McConnell, “Originalism and the Desegregation Decision,” Virginia Law Review 81 (1995): 947; Michael J. Klarman, “Brown, Originalism and Constitutional Theory: A Response to Professor McConnell,” Virginia Law Review 81 (1995): 1881; Alexander M. Bickel, “The Original Understanding and the Segregation Decision,” Harvard Law Review 69 (1955): 1. For a defense of Fourteenth Amendment originalism that condemns racial affirmative action see Michael B. Rappaport, “Originalism and the Colorblind Constitution,” Social Science Research Network (SSRN, April 3, 2013).

  12. Plessy, 163 U.S. 559 (Harlan, J., dissenting).

  13. See Earl M. Maltz, “Only Partially Color-Blind: John Marshall Harlan’s View of Race and the Constitution,” Georgia State University Law Review 12 (1996): 973.

  14. Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157 (1961). See the excellent discussion of the history of the Harlan declaration in the Supreme Court by Richard A. Primus, “Canon, Anti-Canon, and Judicial Dissent,” Duke Law Journal 48 (1998): 243, 245–47.

  15. Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 523 (1980).

  16. City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 520–21 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring).

  17. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007).

  18. Michael Kinsley, “The Spoils of Victimhood: The Case Against the Case Against Affirmative Action,” The New Yorker, March 27, 1995.

  19. “Churchmen Urge Full Negro Rights,” New York Times, December 26, 1942.

  20. “Democracy Is Color-Blind,” New York Times, January 28, 1951.

  21. Quoted in Parents Involved, 551 U.S. 770 (2007).

  22. Ibid., 772.

  23. Ibid., 772.

  24. See Gary Peller, Critical Race Consciousness: Reconsidering American Ideologies of Racial Justice (2011).

  25. See Peter Irons, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese Internment Cases (1983).

  26. Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202 (1965).

  27. See Randall Kennedy, Race, Crime, and the Law (1997), 193–203.

  28. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).

  29. See Kennedy, Race, Crime, and the Law, 136–167.

  30. See Stuart Taylor, Jr., “The Case for Using Racial Profiling at Airports, National Journal, September 22, 2001.

  31. See Randall Kennedy, “Blind Spot: Racial Profiling, Meet Your Alter Ego: Affirmative Action,” Atlantic Monthly, April 2002.

  32. See Bruce S. Gelber, “Race-Conscious Approaches to Ending Segregation in Housing: Some Pitfalls on the Road to Integration,” Rutgers Law Review 37 (1985): 921; Rodney A. Smolla, “Integration Maintenance: The Unconstitutionality of Benign Programs That Discourage Black Entry to Prevent White Flight,” Duke Law Journal (1981): 891; Bruce L. Ackerman, “Integration for Subsidized Housing and the Question of Racial Occupancy Controls,” Stanford Law Review 26 (1973): 245; Boris I. Bittker, “The Case of the Checker-Board Ordinance: An Experiment in Race Relations,” Yale Law Journal 71 (1962): 1387; Victor Navasky, “The Benevolent Housing Quota,” Howard Law Journal 6 (1960): 30.

  33. See Randall Kennedy, Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption (2003), 367–401; Elizabeth Bartholet, “Where Do Black Children Belong? The Politics of Race Matching in Adoption,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 139 (1991): 1163.

  34. Kull, The Color-Blind Constitution, 5.

  35. Adarand v. Peña, 515 U.S. 240 (Thomas, J., concurring).

  36. Johnson v. California, 543 U.S. 499 (2005).

  37. Nathan Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (1961), 181–82.

  38. See Brad Snyder, “How the Conservatives Canonized Brown v. Board of Education,” Rutgers Law Review 52 (2000): 383.

  39. See Keith M. Finley, Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938–1965 (2008); William A. Link, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (2008).

  40. See Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (1976), 606–609; Brad Snyder and John Q. Barrett, “Rehnquist’s Missing Letter: A Former Law Clerk’s 1955 Thoughts on Justice Jackson and Brown,” Boston College Law Review 53 (2012): 631.

  41. See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).

  42. An exception was Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985).

  43. See Jerome Cristal Culp, Jr., “Understanding the Racial Discourse of Justice Rehnquist,” Rutgers Law Journal 25 (1993): 597; Alan Dershowitz, “Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist,” Huffington Post, September 4, 2005.

  44. Adarand v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200, 240–41 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring) (internal quotation marks omitted).

  45. Stanley Fish, “Reverse Racism, or How the Pot Got to Call the Kettle Black,” The Atlantic Monthly, November 1993.

  46. See Weber v. Kaiser Aluminum Chemical Corp., 611 F.2d 139 (5th Cir. 1980).

  47. Adarand v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200, 243–47 (1995).

  48. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971).

  49. Ibid, 431.

  50. Ibid.

  51. See the decisions disapprovingly cited by the Supreme Court in Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 244 n.12 (1976).

  52. Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229 (1976).

  53. See, e.g., Personnel Administration v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979).

  54. Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice, Report to the Attorney General Redefining Discrimination: Disparate Impact and the Institutionalization of Affirmative Action (November, 1987), 1.

  55. See Ricci v. Stefano, 557 U.S. 557–594 (2009) (Scalia, J., concurring).

  56. Ibid., 594–595.

  57. See Primus Richard, “Equal Protection and Disparate Impact: Round Three,” Harvard Law Review 117 (2003): 493, 526 (“criticism of facially neutral antidiscrimination laws seems tendentious and farfetched. Such laws are now deeply entrenched within a normative consensus”).

  58. See J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restrictions and the Establishment of the One-Party South 1880–1910 (1974): 58–59; Guinn v. United, 238 U.S. 347 (1915) (Supreme Court invalidates grandfather clauses in constitution of Oklahoma).

  59. See, e.g., Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985).

  60. Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Grutter v. Bollinger, Supreme Court of the United States (2003) in Gerhard Casper and Kathleen M. Sullivan, eds., Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law 2002 Term Supplement (2004), 452–457.

  61. City of Richmond, 488 U.S. (1989), 507.

  62. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. (2003), 339.

  63. Parents Involved v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 700, 735 (2007).

  64. Brian T. Fitzpatrick, “Can Michigan Universities Use Proxies for Race After the Ban on Racial Preferences?” Michigan Journal of Rac
e and Law 19 (2007): 277. See also Brian T. Fitzpatrick, “Strict Scrutiny of Facially Race-Neutral State Action and the Texas Ten Percent Plan,” Baylor Law Review 53 (2001): 289.

  65. Ward Connerly, “ ‘No Place in Life or Law’: Racial Preferences Deserve No Federal Support,” Washington Times, January 21, 2003.

  66. Roger Clegg, “Preferences by Any Other Name,” Legal Times, February 10, 2003.

  67. See Randall Kennedy, The Persistence of the Color Line, 263–64.

  68. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 349–350 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring and dissenting).

  69. See Paul Freund, “Constitutional Dilemmas,” Boston University Law Review 45 (1965): 13, 20.

  4. THE SUPREME COURT AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

  1. Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, 553 P. 2d 1152, 1170 (Cal. 1976).

  2. Ibid, 1171.

  3. See Howard Ball, The Bakke Case: Race, Education, and Affirmative Action (2000); Bernard Schwartz, Behind Bakke: Affirmative Action and the Supreme Court (1988); Joel Dreyfuss and Charles Lawrence III, The Bakke Case: The Politics of Inequality (1979).

  4. Harry T. Edwards, “Preferential Remedies and Affirmative Action in Employment in the Wake of Bakke,” Washington University Law Quarterly 1979 (1979): 113–14.

  5. Guido Calabresi, “Bakke as Pseudo-Tragedy,” Catholic University Law Review 28 (1979): 427.

  6. Vincent Blasi, “Bakke as Precedent: Does Mr. Justice Powell Have a Theory?” California Law Review 67 (1979): 21.

  7. Ronald Dworkin, “The Bakke Decision: Did It Decide Anything?” New York Review of Books, August 17, 1978.

  8. Quoted in Michael Selmi, “The Life of Bakke: An Affirmative Action Retrospective,” Georgetown Law Journal 87 (1999): 981, 1005.

  9. Quoted in ibid.

  10. Quoted in Charles R. Babcock and Loretta Tofani, “The Reaction: All Sides Optimistic, a Ruling with Something for Everyone,” Washington Post, June 29, 1978.

  11. Ibid.

  12. Scalia, “The Disease as Cure,” 148.

  13. See, e.g., Anthony Lewis, “A Solomonic Decision,” New York Times, June 29, 1978.

  14. Kenneth L. Karst and Harold W. Horowitz, “The Bakke Opinions and Equal Protection Doctrine,” Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review 14 (1979): 7.

  15. Paul J. Mishkin, “The Uses of Ambivalence: Reflections on the Supreme Court and the Constitutionality of Affirmative Action,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 131 (1983): 907, 929.

  16. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 291 (1978).

  17. Ibid., 293.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid., 292.

  21. Ibid., 295.

  22. Ibid.

  23. See John Hart Ely, “The Constitutionality of Reverse Discrimination,” University of Chicago Law Review 41 (1974): 723.

  24. Regents of the University of California, 438 U.S. 295 (1978).

  25. Ibid., 297–98.

  26. Brief for Petitioner, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978). See Philip B. Kurland and Gerhard Casper, eds., Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law 1977 Term Supplement, vol. 99 (1978): 98.

  27. Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978). See Kurland and Casper, eds., Landmark Briefs and Arguments, vol. 99, 294–295.

  28. Regents of the University of California, 438 U.S. 307 (1978).

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Ibid., 311.

  33. Ibid., 314.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid., 313.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Ibid., 314.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Ibid., 315.

  40. Ibid., 322–23.

  41. Ibid., 317.

  42. Ibid., 318.

  43. Ibid., 294.

  44. Ibid., 389.

  45. Ibid., 390.

  46. Ibid., 396.

  47. Vincent Blasi, “Bakke as Precedent: Does Mr. Justice Powell Have a Theory?” California Law Review 67 (1979): 21.

  48. Regents of the University of California, 438 U.S. 312 n.48 (1978).

  49. Ibid.

  50. Karst and Horowitz, “The Bakke Opinions and Equal Protection Doctrine,” 16.

  51. Ibid., 16.

  52. Ibid., 17.

  53. John C. Jeffries, Jr., “Bakke Revisited,” The Supreme Court Review (2003): 1, 7.

  54. George Will, “The Unintended Consequences of Racial Preferences,” Washington Post, November 30, 2011.

  55. Jeffries, “Bakke Revisited,” 8.

  56. Regents of the University of California, 438 U.S. 318 (1978).

  57. Ibid., 406.

  58. Ibid., 319.

  59. Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996).

  60. Metro Broadcasting, 497 U.S. 547 (1990).

  61. Adarand v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200 (1995).

  62. Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 948 (5th Cir. 1996).

  63. Ibid. (quoting Richard A. Posner, “The DeFunis Case and the Constitutionality of Preferential Treatment of Racial Minorities,” Supreme Court Review 1974 [1974]: 12).

  64. Grutter v. Bollinger, 288 F.3d732, 772 (6th Cir. 2002).

  65. Ibid., 752–753.

  66. Metro Broadcasting, 497 U.S. 547, 568 (1990).

  67. Ibid., 612.

  68. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 325 (2003).

  69. Ibid., 330.

  70. Ibid., 330 (citing Brief for American Educational Research Association et al. as Amici Curiae).

  71. Ibid., 330–31 (citing Brief for 3M et al. as Amici Curiae and Brief for General Motors as Amicus Curiae).

  72. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 331 (2003) (quoting Brief for Julius W. Becton, Jr., et al. as Amici Curiae).

  73. Ibid.

  74. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 331 (2003).

  75. Ibid., 332.

  76. Ibid., 314.

  77. Ibid., 315.

  78. Ibid., 316.

  79. Ibid., 334.

  80. Ibid., 335.

  81. Ibid., 336.

  82. Ibid., 298.

  83. Ibid.

  84. Ibid.

  85. See Justin Pidot, “Intuition or Proof: The Social Science Justification for the Diversity Rationale in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger,” Stanford Law Review 59 (2007): 761.

  86. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 384–386 (2003).

  87. Ibid., 389.

  88. See Brian T. Fitzpatrick, “The Diversity Lie,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 27 (2003): 384; Peter H. Schuck, “Affirmative Action: Past, Present, and Future,” Yale Law & Policy Review 20 (2002): 1, 34.

  89. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 304 (2003).

  90. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 354 n.3 (2003).

  91. See Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction (1991).

  92. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 332 (2003).

  93. Jack Balkin, “Plessy, Brown, and Grutter: A Play in Three Acts,” Cardozo Law Review 26 (2005): 1689; Cynthia Estlund, “Putting Grutter to Work: Diversity, Integration, and Affirmative Action in the Workplace,” Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 14 (2005): 1; Robert Post, “Foreword: Fashioning the Legal Constitution: Culture, Courts, and Law,” Harvard Law Review 117 (2003): 4.

  94. Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 631 F.3d 213, 225 (5th Cir. 2011).

  95. Ibid., 217.

  96. Ibid., 242.

  97. Ibid., 247.

  98. See Fisher v. University of Texas, 644 F.3d 301 (5th Cir. 2011).

  99. Ibid., 303.

  100. Ibid.

  101. Brief of the Petitioner, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Supreme Court of the United States (2012), 19.

  102. Ibid., 20.

  103. Ibid., 23.

  104. Brief of Amicus Curiae California Association of Scholars, Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, R
eason Foundation, Individual Rights Foundation, and American Civil Rights Foundation in Support of Petitioner in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Supreme Court of the United States (2012), 2.

  105. Brief of Abigail Thernstrom, Stephen Thernstrom, and Russell Nieli as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Supreme Court of the United States (2012), 4.

  106. Brief for respondent, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Supreme Court of the United States (2012), 1.

  107. Ibid., 2–3.

  108. Ibid., 30.

  109. Ibid., 31.

  110. Ibid., 32.

  111. Ibid., 32.

  112. Ibid., 33.

  113. Ibid., 34.

  114. Brief of Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton, et al., as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Supreme Court of the United States (2012), 1.

  115. Ibid., 2.

  116. Ibid., 3.

  117. Brief for Amici Curiae Fortune-100 and Other Leading American Businesses in Support of Respondents, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Supreme Court of the United States (2012), 2.

  118. Ibid., 2–3.

  119. Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, 634 (1950).

  120. Hopwood v. Texas, 861 F.Supp 551, 554 (W.D. Tex. 1994).

  121. Ibid., 553.

  122. Ibid., 554.

  123. Ibid., 583.

  124. Ibid., 572.

  125. Ibid., 577.

  126. Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996).

  127. Ibid., 953, quoting Maryland Troopers Ass’n. v. Evans, 993 F.2d 1072, 1079 (4th Cir. 1993).

  128. Ibid.

  129. Ibid.

  130. The Sweatt Family Brief in support of respondent, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, Supreme Court of the United States (2012), 1.

  5. REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONTROVERSY

  1. Richard Kahlenberg, Online Fister Symposium: In Defense of Race-Neutral Alternative Jurisprudence, Scotusblog, September 11, 2012.

  2. Ibid.

  3. See, generally, Zoya Hasan and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds., Equalizing Access: Affirmative Action in Higher Education in India, United States, and South Africa (2012); Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action around the World; An Empirical Study (2004); Thomas Sowell, Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (1990); George M. Fredrickson, Diverse Nations: Exploration in the History of Racial and Ethnic Pluralism (2001); James P. Sterba, “Completing Thomas Sowell’s Study of Affirmative Action and then Drawing Different Conclusions,” Stanford Law Review 57 (2004): 657.