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The Bakke Decision & Preferential Treatment Issue

This study will argue that the use of racial and ethnic preferences in college or professional school admissions are morally defensible. The basis for the argument will be the Bakke case and the Supreme Court decision on that case which clarified some matters on preferential treatment and left others unsettled.

The Bakke decision of the Supreme Court upheld the California Supreme Court decision which held that white student Allan Bakke had suffered illegal discrimination as a result of the specific University of California at Davis preferential treatment program which set aside a certain number of spots for "minority" group members. Bakke was admitted to Davis as a result of the Supreme Court decision, but the Court "reversed (the California) court's prohibition against taking race into account in any way" (Dworkin, 1985, p. 304).

Powell, writing the decision of the court, focused on the issue of Constitutional (rather than statutory) grounds, specifically the equal protection provided by the Fourteenth Amendment. He "held that the equal protection clause forbids explicit quotas or reserved places unless the school in question can show that these means are necessary to achieve goals of compelling importance, and he held that Davis had not met that burden of proof" (Dworkin, 1985, p. 305).

On a legal basis, then, the Court found that preferential treatment was a legitimate way to institute racial diversity in college. Although Powell and the Court left the means up in the air, the leaning toward the Harvard approach gives a clear indication of what would be acceptable (a reliance on individual-by-individual consideration, as opposed to the Davis effort which was based on a strict number of minority slots which were fully denied to non-minorities).

But what of the moral issue underlying the Court's decision? The minorities under consideration in such preferential treatment programs, the Court found, should not recei...

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The Bakke Decision & Preferential Treatment Issue. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:21, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1704932.html