Bakke to Weber to-?
Silver, Isidore
bility of bureaucracies, whether government or corporate-or were these standards themselves up for grabs in the search for Commonweal is currently operating on its summer...
...confounded not only some predictions (see my article, "Death ISIDORE SILVER of Affirmative Action...
...The next issue will be dated August 31, after which the normal the "best" technical solutions...
...What are Weber's guidelines for both voluntarily adopted affirmative action programs and future court orders attempting A.D.A...
...Columnist Garry Wills recently wrote that both misleading and irrelevant, for four of the pro-Bakke the reasons behind Teddy Kennedy's success in the Justices did not mention the Fourteenth Amendment in that polls may not be charism but, instead, a genuine rise in case at all...
...important because Brennan explicitly disclaimed any intention to "maintain" racial balance once it had been "achieved" by the Kaiser plan...
...Brennan FUNNY THING ON THE WAY TO COURT stressed that Kaiser's "voluntary" compliance with the overall purpose of the Civil Rights Act should be encouraged...
...Commonweal: 420...
...convention to remedy discrimination...
...Thus, the nature and context of affirmative action will con0 N JUNE 27, five Supreme Court Justices found that Kaiser tinue to be critical . factors in future litigation...
...can, Weber be reconciled with last year's Bakke decision...
...yet without them, it cannot muster the political resources to implement any program, no matter how effi- passed muster because it was (a) directed against "traditional cient on paper...
...The New York Times comment that "Bakke . . . turned on the Court's analysis of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amend- A DEBATE HAS started on the popularity of American merit" while Weber "did not involve the Constitution at all" is liberalism...
...no clear signals...
...The decision may have only limited power to compel such action...
...A report from the Boston publication the facts, first, that two pro-Bakke Justices, Stevens and Pow- Working Papers for a New Society argues that liberalism is on ell, did not participate in Weber and, second, a third pro-Bakke the ascent...
...Justice Brennan's majority opinion (a) relegated Bakke to an inconclusive footnote and (b) was premised solely upon his sophisti- IN KENNEDY THEY TRUST cated reading of Title VII (Bakke, it should be remembered, LIBERALISM IN SEARCH OF A CANDIDATE arose under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act...
...How tory at John Jay College of Criminal Justice...
...the percentage of citizens believWeber majority...
...bility of bureaucracies, whether government or corporate-or were these standards themselves up for grabs in the search for Commonweal is currently operating on its summer schedule...
...Parallel the force of Justice Rehnquist's dissent (though not, one statistics can be found in areas as different as school integrahopes, by its mean-tempered tone), provided only fuzzy tion and sexual mores...
...and (c) temporary, since the promotion plan was to industry will support it...
...Commonweal, March 30, 1979) but (Isidore Silver is Professor of Constitutional Law and Hisalso engendered some confusion in early news accounts...
...The latter is behind his energy program, will the nation support it...
...The administration has given biweekly schedule will resume...
...ing that government should limit corporate profits increased Justice Brennan's majority opinion, perhaps discomfited by from 25 percent in 1966 to 55 percent last year...
...b) proreturning from Camp David, "I told him that he has got to tective of white interests (contrary to the Boston Globe's persuade the public that he has a clear, understandable plan comment that Weber was "shut out," his promotion was only and the staff to follow through on it...
...Said corporate leader David J. Mahoney on patterns of racial segregation" in crafts occupations...
...And only if Carter persuades the terminate when the proportion of blacks in skilled occupations public he has a clear, understandable set of political principles reached their proportion in the local population...
...In spite of the seemingly endless reports guidelines for judging the validity of other voluntary affirma- of its death, liberalism must still be considered one of the most tive action plans and even fuzzier ones for determining how far important forces in American politics, particularly Democratic federal courts could go in mandating such action...
...Although Brennan did not address the question of just how Affirmative action fara court could go in remedying "past proven violations" of Title VII (an issue of some significance as I pointed out in these pages last March), he may have been humbled by Rehnquist's blistering dissent which, at times, seemed to be directed toB1~KKE TO WEBER TO...
...Kaiser's plan party politics...
...Employers Aluminum's affirmative action plan "designed to elimi- should voluntarily and flexibly remedy past discrimination nate conspicuous racial imbalances in [the company's] rather than take solace in Rehnquist's warning (and Brennan's then almost exclusively white craft work forces" did not reluctance to contest it) that courts and other federal agencies violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...
...Bakke cannot readily be reconciled with Weber...
...ward this-next-issue rather than the one at hand...
...Public confidence in big business leadership Justice, Stewart, silently switched his vote to provide the plummeted in the last decade...
...The critical difference between the two cases lay in national liberal attitudes...
...If he does, private delayed...
Vol. 106 • August 1979 • No. 14
