The Making of Reverse Discrimination (eBook)

How DeFunis and Bakke Bleached Racism from Equal Protection

Ellen Messer-Davidow (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021
392 Seiten
University Press of Kansas (Verlag)
978-0-7006-3222-0 (ISBN)

Infos

In The Making of Reverse Discrimination Ellen Messer-Davidow offers a fresh and incisive analysis of the legal-judicial discourse of DeFunis v. Odegaard (1974) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the first two cases challenging race-conscious admissions to professional schools to reach the US Supreme Court. While the voluminous literature on DeFunis and Bakke has focused on the Supreme Courts far from definitive answers to important constitutional questions, Messer-Davidow closely examines each case from beginning to end. She investigates the social surrounds where the cases incubated, their tours through the courts, and their aftereffects. Her analysis shows how lawyers and judges used the mechanisms of language and law to narrow the conflict to a single white male applicant and a single white-dominated university program to dismiss the historical, sociological, statistical, and experiential facts of systemic racism and thereby to assemble reverse discrimination as a new object of legal analysis.In exposing the discursive mechanisms that marginalized the interests of applicants and communities of color, Messer-Davidow demonstrates that the construction of facts, the reasoning by precedent, and the invocation of constitutional principles deserve more scrutiny than they have received in the scholarly literature. Although facts, precedents, and principles are said to bring stability and equity to the law, Messer-Davidow argues that the white-centered narratives of DeFunis and Bakke not only bleached the color from equal protection but also served as the template for the dozens of anti"e;affirmative action projectslawsuits, voter referenda, executive ordersthat conservative movement organizations mounted in the following years.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.8.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Arbeits- / Sozialrecht ► Arbeitsrecht
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
• Schlagworte: attack on affirmative action • conservative movement organizations • DeFunis v Odegaard • Jurisprudence • Legal discourse • legal facts and social facts • Legal Principles • public interest law firms • racial conflict • Racial Discrimination • Regents of the University of California v Bakke • reverse discrimination lawsuits • Systemic Racism
• ISBN-10: 0-7006-3222-0 / 0700632220
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7006-3222-0 / 9780700632220