Law Commons^™

What Is Affirmative Action?, John Valery White

Scholarly Works

There is no rigorous definition of affirmative action. This Article argues that this remarkable circumstance has distorted and undercut American antidiscrimination law.

Though affirmative action is vigorously and widely debated, it has not been defined in the rigorous manner legal commentators would normally demand. Rather, commentators have deferred to policymakers' descriptions of affirmative action programs and employed those “definitions” to set the terms of policy debates over the propriety of affirmative action. Typically, commentators take for granted that affirmative action is “discriminatory” and seek to justify its use in certain contexts. This approach is also prominent in the United States …