Hello
Affirmative action
What does Affirmative action mean in American Law?
The definition of Affirmative action in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:
Though the term has had some currency in other legal contexts (e.g., in the National Labor Relations Act, where it refers to the NLRB's power to take “affirmative action” to carry out the purposes of the Act), the most important present-day legal use of the term is in the context of civil rights. More particularly, it is clearly present law that under various statutes, executive orders, constitutional interpretations, etc., an entity which has previously been guilty of unlawful discrimination (on the basis of race, sex, age, etc.) is permitted and may be ordered to undertake an act or program of affirmative action to undo, or at least mitigate, the effects of such prior discrimination. Cf. active cause. Hence, e.g., if it has been found that a school board discriminated against Black students by assigning them to segregated schools, and thus all the individual schools in the district are presently either all Black or non-Black, a court may order the school board to take affirmative action to desegregate the schools, e.g., to abandon its “neighborhood school” policy and move students around, perhaps by bussing them out of their segregated neighborhoods.
(Some types of voluntary “affirmative action” seem to be permitted even if prior unlawful discrimination has not been proven. See Weber case.)
What kinds of affirmative actions will be ordered or permitted vary, of course, depending on the costs of alternatives, their ultimate effectiveness, and the context in which the discrimination has operated, e.g., if the discrimination were in employment rather than schooling, bussing would not be effective, but modified hiring rules would. Whatever the context, however, in seeking to give particular content to “affirmative action,” numerous recurrent problems have arisen, mostly centered on the fact that an attempt affirmatively to undo past illegal discrimination will ordinarily impose upon other people what they perceive as unfair costs, what has been characterized as “reverse discrimination.” Let us say, for instance, that a police force had been unlawfully discriminating against Black applicants. The Court orders it, of course, no longer to do so, but also orders that one quarter of all future applicants hired be Black until Blacks make up at least 15% of the force. From the point of view of a non-Black applicant who would on the basis of the force's ordinary employment standards have been hired, it appears that he has been discriminated against for being non-Black. Similarly, a school child sent on an hour-a-day bus ride to integrate a school rendered segregated ten years before his birth would frequently
be seen by his parents as unfairly treated. In any event, the constitutional ambit of lawful affirmative action in the divers contexts (e.g., race compared to sex; education compared to employment; governmental discrimination as compared to “private” discrimination; “forced” (because of previous finding of discrimination) as compared to “voluntary”) is still in the process of determination in the courts. See, e.g., Bakke case, Weber case. It is clear that the more speedy and powerful the particular affirmative action technique chosen (e.g., bussing; employment “quotas” rather than “targets”-see quotas and targets), the less popular it is likely to be with the general electorate, and the more likely it
is to be unchosen, or forbidden, by statute, while less dramatic choices (e.g., vastly expanded searches for qualified members of previously disfavored groups; the use of targets rather than quotas; the use of “magnet schools”) will have an easier political time. But, as noted, the constitutional situation is still fluid.
Affirmative Action in the law of the United States
Affirmative Action: Related U.S. Resources
- Affirmative Action in the American Law Encyclopedia
- Judicial Effects and Policies Keywords in the U.S. Legal Corpus
- Judicial Policies Topics in the United States Legal Dictionary
See Also
Civil Rights (in the U.S. Legal Encyclopedia) Equal Protection (in the U.S. Legal Encyclopedia).
Affirmative Action, Sexual Behaviour and the Law
Affirmative Action
See Also
Discrimination
Further Reading
Affirmative Action in Voting Law
Definition of Affirmative Action in the context of the United States election law: Positive, often temporary measures taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in employment, education, politics and business from which they have been historically excluded. The objective is to level the playing field, so as to enable those who have been disadvantaged to participate. (See: Temporary special measures)
Affirmative Action in Voting Law
Definition of Affirmative Action in the context of the United States election law: Positive, often temporary measures taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in employment, education, politics and business from which they have been historically excluded. The objective is to level the playing field, so as to enable those who have been disadvantaged to participate. (See: Temporary special measures)
Meaning of Affirmative Action in Political Science
A very basic notion of Affirmative Action related to the United States’election law is provided here: A policy to increase employment for minorities
Resources
Legal English Vocabulary: Affirmative Action in Spanish
Online translation of the English legal term affirmative action into Spanish: acción positiva (English to Spanish translation) . More about legal dictionary from english to spanish online.
Related to the Legal Thesaurus
Affirmative Action (Judicial Policies)
Affirmative Action
Meaning of Affirmative Action
Resources
See Also
Resources
See Also
- Civil Liberty
- Civil Right
- Legal Right
- Citizen Freedom
- Political Liberty
- Constitutional Right
- Political Right
- Freedom of Speech
Leave a Reply