Affirmative Action and Legal Knowledge: Planting Seeds in Plowed-Up Ground
![handle is hein.journals/hwlj11 and id is 9 raw text is: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND LEGAL KNOWLEDGE:
PLANTING SEEDS IN PLOWED-UP GROUND
MAR! MATSUDA*
I. INTRODUCTION
As twentieth century scholars we are pursued by the relativity
of knowledge. Anthropologists, historians of science, feminist
theorists, and critical legal scholars are among those attempting
to understand the degree to which knowledge is contingent or
autonomous, real or imagined, accidental or purposeful.' Those
outside the traditional center of academia intuit that their personal
knowledge - what they hold true and dear, what is real to them
- often comes from their life experience as outsiders.2 Women
report the experience of a different reality, a different morality.'
People of color find an affinity of knowledge in their separate
* Assistant Professor of Law, University of Hawaii School of Law. B.A., Arizona
State University, 1975; J.D., University of Hawaii School of Law, 1980; L.L.M., Harvard
Law School, 1983.
1 See Minow, The Supreme Court, 1986 Term - Forward: Justice Engendered, 101
HARV. L. REv. 10 (1987).
2 See, e.g., THE AuTHORiTY OF EXPERIENCE: ESSAYS IN FEMINIST CRITICISM (A.
Diamond & L. Edwards eds. 1977).
Outsiders is used throughout the remainder of this article to encompass various out-
groups, including women, people of color, poor people, gays and lesbians, indigenous
Americans, and other oppressed people who have suffered historical under-representation
and silencing in the law schools. Outsiders is an awkward term, used here experimen-
tally to avoid the use of minority. The outsiders collectively are a numerical majority
in this country. The inclusive term is not intended to deny the need for separate consid-
eration of the circumstances of each group. It is a semantic convenience used here to
discuss the need for epistemological inclusion of the views of many dominated groups.
3 See, e.g., C. GILLIGAN, IN A DIFFERENT VOICE (1982). Gilligan's description of a
separate female experience and other feminists' moral views are discussed and critiqued
in Dubois, Dunlap, Gilligan, MacKinnon & Menkel-Meadow, Feminist Discourse, Moral
Values, and the Law - A Conversation, 34 BUFFALO L. REv. 11 (1985) [hereinafter
Feminist Discourse]. See also E. ABEL, WRITING AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE (1982) (for
a discussion of the unique attributes of female perception and writing).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hwlj11&div=5&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Affirmative Action and Legal Knowledge: Planting Seeds in Plowed-Up Ground
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