California vs bakke summary. Regents of the University of California V. Bakke Short Summary Essay Example 2022-10-29
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The case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, also known as Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, was a landmark Supreme Court case that was decided in 1978. The case centered on Allan Bakke, a white man who had been denied admission to the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. Bakke claimed that the university's use of racial quotas in its admissions process was discriminatory against him and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The University of California, Davis School of Medicine had a policy of reserving 16 out of 100 seats in each incoming class for minority students. Bakke argued that this policy was unfair because it disadvantaged white applicants like him, and that the university should use a more race-neutral admissions process. The university argued that the use of racial quotas was necessary to achieve diversity in its student body and that it was a necessary means of addressing past discrimination against minority groups.
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Bakke, holding that the use of racial quotas in college admissions was unconstitutional. However, the Court also held that diversity in higher education was a compelling governmental interest, and that race could be considered as one factor in the admissions process as long as it was not the sole or decisive factor.
The Bakke decision had a significant impact on affirmative action policies in the United States. It marked a shift away from the use of rigid racial quotas in college admissions, but it also allowed for the consideration of race as a factor in the admissions process. The Bakke case remains an important precedent in the field of education law and has been cited in numerous cases involving affirmative action and diversity in higher education.
Who won Bakke v California?
The trial court found that although the special admission program purports to be open to "educationally or economically disadvantaged" students, and although in 1973 and 1974 some applications for the program were received from members of the white race, only minority students had been admitted under the program since its inception, and members of the white race were barred from participation. In response, the medical school voluntarily adopted the "special admission" program at issue in this case to overcome the exclusionary effect of its past policies and to achieve an integrated student body composed of qualified students of all races and ethnic groups. However, it is improper to set racial quotas as part of an affirmative action admissions program. In upholding the right of a state to ban picketing the purpose of which was to compel a store to hire Negroes in proportion to Negro customers, the high court held, "To deny to California the right to ban picketing in the circumstances of this case would mean that there could be no prohibition of the pressure of picketing to secure proportional employment on ancestral grounds of Hungarians in Cleveland, of Poles in Buffalo, of Germans in Milwaukee, of Portuguese in New Bedford, of Mexicans in San Antonio, of the numerous minority groups in New York, and so on through the whole gamut of racial and religious concentrations in various cities. None of the foregoing measures can be related to race, but they will provide for consideration and assistance to individual applicants who have suffered previous disabilities, regardless of their surname or color. The majority engage in indefensible rhetoric in suggesting that the medical school excluded whites on the basis of their race.
To date, courts have always respected a college or professional school's determination that the educational benefits of a diverse student body justify a departure from adherence to strict objective academic credentials for a particular group of applicants; such "preferential" policies have perhaps most commonly been adopted to promote geographic diversity, but similar admission preferences have regularly been employed to serve less compelling interests, for example to give preference to an applicant's athletic ability or to his relationship to an alumnus or institutional benefactor. Regents of California v. This fundamental error inevitably infects and invalidates the majority's ultimate constitutional conclusion. The Equal Protection Clause states that "No State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. This occurred when Hopwood, et. Downstate Medical Center 1976 39 N.
The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
The Impact of Bakke Impact on College Admissions. Powell determines that accepting a minimum number of minorities simply to reduce the traditional deficit of such individuals in the medical profession is facially unconstitutional, as it gives preference to an individual on the basis of race alone. However, the Justices believe that in this particular example, race should be allowed as a single determining factor. It must be emphasized, however, that the special admission program did not contemplate, nor sanction, the admission of unqualified applicants simply because they were minorities. At the same time, the preferred applicants have the opportunity to compete for every seat in the class.
The question of the constitutional legitimacy of utilizing racial classifications to achieve integration first arose in the context of efforts to desegregate public primary and secondary schools. In the course of the past 200 years, racial classifications have been utilized to subjugate racial and ethnic minorities to a separate and inferior existence in American society. The dissent charges that the combined numerical rating of an applicant does not include all his qualifications because it does not contain one factor favorable to disadvantaged minority applicants, i. This ruling occurred at the start of the civil rights movement on May 17th, 1954. Second, the majority incorrectly assert that the minority students accepted under the special admission program are "less qualified" -- under the medical school's own standards -- than nonminority applicants rejected by the medical school.
Regents of the University of California v. A principled position on that issue can be more persuasively and consistently developed by arguing for preferences or against preferences than by seeking to discriminate among racial preferences to justify some kinds and repudiate others. There is no certainty, for example, that the Harvard College model can usefully be transferred to less selective colleges or to professional schools. Affirmative action is a controversial topic when it comes to college acceptance and admissions. Lawrence III and Nathaniel S.
See Slaughterhouse Cases, supra, 83 U. . Believing the Davis program to be impermissible under both equal protection and Title VI, Powell added his vote on this issue to the Stevens group; as a consequence, five justices voted to strike down the minority preferential admissions program and to order the admission of Allan Bakke to the Davis medical school. Bakke 1978 , the Supreme Court ruled that a university's use of racial "quotas" in its admissions process was unconstitutional, but a school's use of "affirmative action" to accept more minority applicants was constitutional in some circumstances. Brown 2 slowed down the integration processes.
No fewer than 26 amici curiae briefs were filed in the United States Supreme Court in De Funis. The Court might consider a policy of prohibiting racial reparations that lack explicit political authorization and of reviewing authorized reparations to ensure that the racial preferences employed are the least burdensome means of achieving the designated ends. In our view, the conclusion is inescapable that at least some applicants were denied admission to the medical school solely because they were not members of a minority race. Because of the manifest prejudice to educational institutions if we were to require that our holding herein be applied so as to set aside admission decisions made in the past, the rule we announce shall, with the exceptions hereafter specified, govern only those admission decisions made after the date this opinion becomes final in this court. There are, however, several principled grounds for drawing just the distinction that the cases have in fact drawn. The University seeks to justify the program on the ground that the admission of minority students is necessary in order to integrate the medical school and the profession. Secondly, Bakke alleged that he and other nonminority applicants were better qualified for admission than the minority students accepted under the special admission program, and the question we must decide is whether the rejection of better qualified applicants on racial grounds is constitutional.
If a candidate passes this initial scrutiny, his application is reviewed by the special committee for the purpose of determining whether he should be invited for a personal interview. Hopkins, supra, Second, in addition to the history and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, constitutional decisions explicating the appropriate scope of judicial review provide a sound basis for the differential judicial treatment of invidious and benign racial classifications. Case History In the early 1970s, many colleges and universities across America were in the beginning stages of making major changes to their admissions programs in an effort to diversify the student body by increasing the number of minority students on campus. The Regents of the University of California v. Despite the "preference" inherent in such an integration tool, courts have repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of such programs.
Often overlooked, however, is the harm they cause these same individuals. As time went on, a distinct difference emerged between the legal language used in Brown v. The trial court ruled in his favor, but its judgment was reversed by the Washington Supreme Court, which found a compelling state interest in integration of the school and the profession. Although the court found that the school had discriminated in favor of the minority applicants, it did not decide whether the preference was constitutional. In recent years numerous decisions of this court, the United States Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have firmly established that the use of racial classifications to promote integration or to remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination is neither presumptively unconstitutional nor suspect, but rather is fully consistent with the precepts of the equal protection clause. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor without due process of the law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
They forbade the use of racial quotas in school admissions, but allowed some consideration of race in admissions decisions. In short, there is no empirical data to demonstrate that any one race is more selflessly socially oriented or by contrast that another is more selfishly acquisitive. The confusion underlying the majority's approach may be traced to statements in several benign racial classification cases indicating that an employer or educational institution may not be judicially compelled to adopt remedial racial classifications unless it has engaged in racial discrimination in the past. Odegaard, which involved a program at the University of Washington law school. The colonists were already fighting Britain in the Revolutionary War at this time. VI, § 12; rule 20, Cal. The fact that all the minority students admitted under the special program may have been qualified to study medicine does not significantly affect our analysis of the issues.
