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14 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 31 (1979)
Litigation without Representation: The Need for Intervention to Affirm Affirmative Action

handle is hein.journals/hcrcl14 and id is 39 raw text is: LITIGATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION: THE NEED FOR INTERVENTION TO AFFIRM AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Emma Coleman Jones* When Allan Bakke went to court to challenge affirmative action and to secure an order for his admission to the University of California at Davis Medical School, no party in the suit directly represented the interests of minority' applicants, who would be most affected by an unsuccessful defense of the University's race-conscious admission program: The University chose to defend its voluntary program as designed to serve general societal purposes2 without reference to its own arguably discriminatory practices. As a result, significant minor- ity interests were imperiled. The lack of minority participation in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke3 does not reflect a conscious effort by the Univer- *Acting Professor of Law, University of California, Davis. B.A. California State University, San Francisco 1969; J.D. Howard University 1973. I greatly appre- ciate the research assistance that Gilda Turitz provided in the earlier stages of this work. For a careful review of earlier drafts and comments I owe a great debt to my colleagues Edward L. Barrett, Jr., and Jean C. Love. The term minority group will be used throughout to refer to the discrete and insular minorities who have been saddled with ... disabilities,... subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process. San Antonio Indep. School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 28 (1973). This definition is comprehensible and operational, notwithstanding the contro- versy generated by attempts to define rival groups. See Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 2784 n.35 (1978) (Brennan, White, Marshall & Blackmun, JJ.). See also DiLeo v. Regents of Univ. of Colo., 47 U.S.L.W. 3429 (U.S. Apr. 23, 1978) (denying cert.). 2 See Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 2757 (1978) (Powell, J.) (enumeratin& four purposes). 3 98 S. Ct. 2733 (1978). The absence of minority advocates is striking when compared with the active role which black lawyers, sociologists, and educators played in the formulation and execution of a strategy of the assault upon segregated schools which culminated in Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (Brown I); 349 U.S. 294 (1955) (Brown II). The involvement of black lawyers in Brown I and

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