Means Discrimination: An Investigation into the Ideology of Constitutional Equality |
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| Authors: | JOHN BRIGHAM |
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| Institution: | Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He studied under C. Herman Pritchett at the University of California, Santa Barbara and has written on constitutional language and civil liberties. He is a member of the Amherst Seminar on Legal Ideology and Legal Process. |
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| Abstract: | Constitutional "equal protection" has a technical meaning that orients legal thinking. Its roots are in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and the relationship between separation of the races in schools, theaters, and other public places and the guarantee of material or physical equality. Brown v. The Board of Education (1954), in eliminating separation from constitutional protection also eliminated the constitutional promise of material equality.
The approach to this ideology turns away from outcomes in order to get to the meanings, standards and conceptual parameters that influence the application of constitutional discourse to discrimination against those with inadequate means. |
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