In 2008, a young caucasian woman named Abigail Fisher applied to the University of Texas at Austin. When she was denied admission, ostensibly because the school used her race as a factor in its admissions decision, she filed suit against the University of Texas for violating her rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. By doing so, she entered into an ongoing fierce debate over affirmative action policies. This debate was, unsurprisingly, not resolved by her suit and, in fact, her case again currently sits in front of the Court as of the writing of this paper.
Fisher’s case has brought renewed national attention to the use of affirmative action in university admission practices, and there …show more content…
To do so, this paper will first define affirmative action, giving an overview of this debate. From there, this paper will provide a brief history of the term and explain why it is particularly important to focus on affirmative action in university admissions practices. After providing a basic historical framework, this paper will then examine the major federal statutes relevant to this policy area, focusing particularly on the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964 and 1991, and demonstrate how the vague language in these statutes paved the way for interpretation through adversarial legalism. In doing so, this paper will also delve into several pivotal Supreme Court cases. Ultimately, this paper will demonstrate that affirmative action is much more politically divisive than it needs to be because of vague statutory language and the rise of adversarial legalism as a means of policy …show more content…
When affirmative action is discussed in the context of higher education, it usually refers to controversial policies to increase the number of minority students admitted to the institution. These affirmative action policies to increase the numbers of minority students have taken a number of different forms. Some like the University of California Board of Regents, whose program was evaluated in the landmark Bakke v. University of California Board of Regents case, created special admissions programs that evaluated minority students separately from white students, and which had a certain number of openings for minority students. Other universities, like the University of Texas system that is currently being contested in the Fisher case, attempted to make race-neutral policies that still sought to increase the number of minority students. This program granted admission the top 10 percent of every high school’s graduating
Fisher’s case has brought renewed national attention to the use of affirmative action in university admission practices, and there …show more content…
To do so, this paper will first define affirmative action, giving an overview of this debate. From there, this paper will provide a brief history of the term and explain why it is particularly important to focus on affirmative action in university admissions practices. After providing a basic historical framework, this paper will then examine the major federal statutes relevant to this policy area, focusing particularly on the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1964 and 1991, and demonstrate how the vague language in these statutes paved the way for interpretation through adversarial legalism. In doing so, this paper will also delve into several pivotal Supreme Court cases. Ultimately, this paper will demonstrate that affirmative action is much more politically divisive than it needs to be because of vague statutory language and the rise of adversarial legalism as a means of policy …show more content…
When affirmative action is discussed in the context of higher education, it usually refers to controversial policies to increase the number of minority students admitted to the institution. These affirmative action policies to increase the numbers of minority students have taken a number of different forms. Some like the University of California Board of Regents, whose program was evaluated in the landmark Bakke v. University of California Board of Regents case, created special admissions programs that evaluated minority students separately from white students, and which had a certain number of openings for minority students. Other universities, like the University of Texas system that is currently being contested in the Fisher case, attempted to make race-neutral policies that still sought to increase the number of minority students. This program granted admission the top 10 percent of every high school’s graduating