Law Commons^™

The Constitutional Implications Of Race-Neutral Affirmative Action, Kim Forde-Mazrui

Kim Forde-Mazrui

This paper explores the constitutional implications of race-neutral affirmative action, i.e., governmental efforts to pursue affirmative action goals, such as remedying discrimination and promoting diversity, through non-racial means. For example, to increase minority enrollment, some public universities give weight in the admission process to economic background. This paper suggests that such "race-neutral" policies may be just as unconstitutional as racial preferences if they are motivated by arguably discriminatory (against whites) purposes. I then present two doctrinal defenses of race-neutral affirmative action. First, assuming that strict scrutiny would apply to such policies, I argue that remedying discrimination, even so-called "societal discrimination," …

Education And The Constitution: Shaping Each Other And The Next Century, Elizabeth Reilly

Elizabeth Reilly

Thinking about the interaction between the Constitution and education reveals that they are deeply interconnected, at profound levels of interdependence and complexity. Those connections are often strikingly visible, but are sometimes quite subtle.

A fundamental interdependence was formed with the decision to formulate our governmental structure as a democratic republic. The Constitution created the necessity for adequate public education to prepare the citizenry to exercise the role of self-government. An educated voting public underpins a successful democratic structure, as was explicitly recognized in Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Court acknowledged:

the importance of education to our democratic …

Urinating On The Pennsylvania Constitution? Drug Testing Of High School Athletes And Article I, Section 8 Of The Pennsylvania Constitution, Amanda Smith

Amanda Sholtis