Equality and Transparency: A Strategic Perspective on Affirmative Action in American Law

Can affirmative action policies be convincingly justified? And how have they been legitimized over time? In a pluridisciplinary perspective at the intersection of political theory and the sociology of law, Daniel Sabbagh criticizes the two prevailing justifications put forward in favor of affirmative action: the corrective justice argument and the diversity argument. He defends the policy instead as an instrument designed to bring about the deracialization of American society. In this respect, however, affirmative action requires a measure of dissimulation in order to succeed. Equality and Transparency explains why this is so and provides a new interpretation of the strategic component in the Supreme Court's case law while identifying some of its most remarkable side effects.

A unique exploration by a French scholar of the contradictions inherent in the practice and justification of affirmative action programs in the United States.

Daniel Sabbagh is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI-Sciences Po). His current work focuses on antidiscrimination policies and multiculturalism in a comparative perspective, the death penalty in the United States, and US-China relations. He is the author of L'Égalité par le droit: les paradoxes de la discrimination positive aux États-Unis (Paris, Économica, 2003 ; « François Furet Book Award 2004 ») - of which Equality and Transparency is a partial and revised translation - and the co-editor (with Patrick Simon) of the symposium « Affirmative Action », International Social Science Journal, 57 (183), March 2005. Along with legal scholar Gwénaële Calvès, he is the coordinator of a research group on antidiscrimination policies at CERI. He has taught at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University and now teaches political science in the graduate school of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris.