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Fourteenth Amendment

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University of Michigan Law School

2008

Race and law

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Affirmative Action & Negative Action: How Jian Li's Case Can Benefit Asian Americans, Adrian Liu Jan 2008

Affirmative Action & Negative Action: How Jian Li's Case Can Benefit Asian Americans, Adrian Liu

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In October 2006, Asian American student Jian D filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton University claiming that Princeton's affirmative action policies were discriminatory. Li argues that affirmative action gives preferences to non-Asian minorities at the expense of Asian students. Li's case aligns the interests of Asian Americans with Whites who challenge affirmative action and suggests that such policies are inherently discriminatory because they exclude students based on race and sacrifice merit. This Article argues that Li's exclusion is not due to affirmative action but is likely due to "negative action," the unfavorable treatment of Asian Americans relative to Whites. …


Public Rights, Social Equality, And The Conceptual Roots Of The Plessy Challenge, Rebecca J. Scott Jan 2008

Public Rights, Social Equality, And The Conceptual Roots Of The Plessy Challenge, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

This Article argues that the test case that gave rise to the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson is best understood as part of a wellestablished, cosmopolitan tradition of anticaste activism in Louisiana rather than as a quixotic effort that contradicted nineteenth-century ideas of the boundaries of citizens' rights. By drawing a dividing line between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and social rights, on the other, the Supreme Court construed challenges to segregation as claims to a "social equality" that was beyond the scope of judicially cognizable rights. The Louisiana constitutional convention of 1867-68, however, had defined …