The Importance of Being Political: How to Understand the US Supreme Court's Approach to Affirmative Action in Education

Abstract

This article examines the evolving jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court’s decisions on the constitutionality of affirmative action with specific focus on education. Traversing the Court’s affirmative action decisions from the 1970s to 2013, the author argues that the best, and possibly only, way to understand the evolution of this politically contentious doctrine is to focus on politics. This requires paying attention to political commitments of the justices, the role of interest groups, the voter alignments of the Democratic and Republican parties and white elite and public opinion. The author uses leading social science approaches to present three models of judicial decision-making: the attitudinal model, the strategic actor model, and the institutional/public opinion model. The article underlines the need to locate the Court within the political and cultural context in which it operates.