Affirmative Action

3. The main issue at stake in Hopwood et al vs. Texas is whether the U.S. Constitution is violated when a university uses race as a factor in deciding whether an individual can be admitted to a school with limited capacity for enrollment. In the background of using race as a factor to help an individual be admitted is the fact that in former times race was used as a factor to keep an individual from being admitted. The idea is to compensate one racial generation for the injustices toward previous racial generations. The Fourteenth Amendment is an important issue in the case because it says that "no state shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law." In the past, before the U.S. laws passed because of the American civil rights movement, African Americans were denied equal protection and equal access. The idea of using race as a factor in school admission is the same as the idea of affirmative action. In other words, the state affirmatively makes an effort to guarantee equal access, to make up for past denials. This was the policy that was used by the University of Texas School of Law.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Hopwood did not agree that this was a good policy, even though the University had "the best of intentions" with it. In other words, the university was acting morally, in a "remedial" and "benign" way, to "even the score" for racial minorities and "to meet an 'aspiration' of admitting a class consisting of 10% Mexican Americans

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Category: Philosophy - A