A timely defense of affirmative action policies that offers a more nuanced understanding of how centuries of invidious racism, discrimination, and segregation in the United States led to and justifies such policies from both a moral and constitutional perspective.Since 1961, the issue of "affirmative action" has been a hotly contested legal and political issue. Intended to address our nation''s often horrifying discrimination against Black Americans and other minorities, affirmative action has led over the past sixty years to far greater minority representation across a vast range of industries, government positions, and academic institutions. Nonetheless, affirmative action policies in the United States continue to fall under assault. In A Legacy of Discrimination, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, two of America''s leading constitutional scholars, trace the policy''s history and the legal challenges it has faced over the decades. They argue that in order to fully comprehend aff
