Number: RL30470
Title: Affirmative Action in Employment: A Legal Overview
Authors: Jody Feder, American Law Division 
Abstract: Affirmative action remains at the center of legal and political debate at the federal, state, and local levels. Seeds of the current legal controversy may be traced to the early 1960s as first the Warren and then the Burger Court grappled with the seemingly intractable problem of racial segregation in the nation's public schools. Judicial rulings from this period recognized an "affirmative duty," cast upon local school boards by the Equal Protection Clause, to desegregate formerly "dual school" systems and to eliminate "root and branch" the last "vestiges" of state-enforced segregation. Soon after, Congress and the Executive followed the Court's lead by approving a panoply of laws and regulations that authorize, either directly or by judicial or administrative interpretation, "race-conscious" strategies to promote minority opportunity in jobs, education, and governmental contracting.
Pages: 18
Date: January 11, 2007