Header: Equal Protection and Equal Representation 

Essay 1.   Is affirmative action an appropriate and effective policy to address past discrimination? Using the cases Regents v. Bakke (1978) and Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al. (2003), address the evolution of the Supreme Court’s reasoning on affirmative action and its long-term utility as a public policy.  

Essay 2. Analyze the political and legal strategies used against segregation. Include a discussion of conditions under segregation in the early twentieth century and the ruling Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) as well as the Supreme Court decisions and reasoning that led to Brown v. Board of Education (1954). How were tactics such as grandfather clauses, white primaries, literacy tests, poll taxes, and racial gerrymandering used to deny voting rights to minority groups, despite the Fourteenth Amendment? What measures abolished these types of laws?