Terry Eastland reviews A Conflict of Principles in the Wall Street Journal:
In his famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld racial segregation, Justice John Marshall Harlan declared: “Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Nearly 60 years later, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954)—the decision that overturned Plessy’s “separate but equal” doctrine—lawyers for the NAACP, including Thurgood Marshall, echoed Harlan by telling the court: “That the Constitution is colorblind is our dedicated belief.” But a broad belief in this principle would last for only a few more years. By the mid-1960s the idea had taken hold that colorblind law and morality were too constraining if minorities were to advance in America. Race-based affirmative action emerged in higher education, employment and government contracting.
Over the years, affirmative-action policies have been the target of lawsuits alleging that they discriminate against those who do not belong to a preferred group—necessarily, when such policies help decide who wins and who loses in a competition for limited opportunities, whether seats in a freshman class or jobs in a fire department. Affirmative action has survived the litigation so far, but it remains unpopular with the American people and its future in the courts is always in doubt.
Carl Cohen knows a thing or two about affirmative action. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan who has long committed himself to the idea that, as he puts it, “all persons should be treated equally, without regard to race.” “A Conflict of Principles” is a kind of legal memoir, tracking Mr. Cohen’s own involvement in the battles over racial preferences and, in engaging and lucid prose, offering a critique of the judicial reasoning behind several momentous court decisions.
A liberal when he joined the Michigan faculty in 1955 (he is now 83), Mr. Cohen stuck to his belief in colorblind law even as educators at his own campus and elsewhere abandoned it. Early in his career, he joined the debate over preferences, arguing against them in various publications and at public events, though to this day he donates money to the NAACP and the ACLU, both ardent supporters of preferences.
Over the years, affirmative-action policies have been the target of lawsuits alleging that they discriminate against those who do not belong to a preferred group—necessarily, when such policies help decide who wins and who loses in a competition for limited opportunities, whether seats in a freshman class or jobs in a fire department. Affirmative action has survived the litigation so far, but it remains unpopular with the American people and its future in the courts is always in doubt.
Carl Cohen knows a thing or two about affirmative action. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan who has long committed himself to the idea that, as he puts it, “all persons should be treated equally, without regard to race.” “A Conflict of Principles” is a kind of legal memoir, tracking Mr. Cohen’s own involvement in the battles over racial preferences and, in engaging and lucid prose, offering a critique of the judicial reasoning behind several momentous court decisions.
A liberal when he joined the Michigan faculty in 1955 (he is now 83), Mr. Cohen stuck to his belief in colorblind law even as educators at his own campus and elsewhere abandoned it. Early in his career, he joined the debate over preferences, arguing against them in various publications and at public events, though to this day he donates money to the NAACP and the ACLU, both ardent supporters of preferences.
Whole thing here.
