Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Established in 1968, the medical school at the University of California implemented a special admissions program to increase the representation of minorities in each entering class. There was one underlying problem with their special admissions program that was not addressed until 1973 when Allan Bakke submitted his application to the University of California.
Their special admissions program worked by reserving sixteen percent of the entering class for minorities. The minorities entering through this special admissions program were processed and interviewed separately from the regular applicants. The grade point averages and standardized test scores from the special-admissions entrants were significantly lower than the grade point averages and standardized test scores of the regular entrants, including our dear friend Allan Bakke.
In 1973 Allan Bakke applied to the medical school at the University of California. His application was rejected because it was turned in near the end of the year and by the time his application was up for consideration they were only accepting those who had scored 470 or better on their interview scores. Bakke had only scored a 468 out of the possible 500. When he learned that four of the special-admissions spots were left unfilled at the time his application was rejected he wrote a letter to Dr. George H. Lowrey, the associate dean and chairman of the admissions committee, stating how the special admissions system was unjust and prejudiced.
When Bakke applied again in 1974 he was once again rejected. This time Bakke sued the University of California. His position was that the school had excluded him on the basis of his race and violated his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the California Constitution, and civil rights legislation. The trial court ruled in Bakke's favor, however they did not order the University of California to admit him. Bakke appealed to the California Supreme Court where they ruled that the school's admissions programs were unconstitutional and ordered the school to admit Bakke as a student.
The school appealed this decision and brought it to the Supreme Court to argue their case on October 12th 1977. The Supreme Court upheld the California Supreme Court's decision with a 5-4 vote. The Court also ruled that the special-admissions program constituted reverse discrimination and was therefore illegal. The Court also said that schools could continue to look at race as a factor when accepting applicants, but they could not set up a quota system or look at race as the only deciding factor.
Despite the ruling of the Supreme court for the states to desegregate their schools, there was some resistance to the ruling. This prompted the Supreme court to make another ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (2) (n.d.). The ruling, in this case, ordered states to immediately comply with the ruling in Brown I.
The name of this case and the specific facts, however, were unavailable at this time.9 Obviously affirmative action and reverse discrimination are still heavily debated issues. This is because they affect all people of all races and ethnicities. Conclusion Allan Bakke was denied his fourteenth amendment right to equal protection of the laws. In addition the University of California at Davis violated Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. By order of the Supreme Court Bakke was admitted and th e numerical quotas of the special admissions program were deemed unconstitutional. Justice was served to Bakke, but future generations who are not minorities may be plagued by the other half of the decision: That race may still be used as a "plus" on an application.
FACTS: Respondent, Davis, a licensed LPN for over ten years who also lives with hearing loss applied for admissions to Southeastern Community College. The Petitioner, requested Davis see an audiologist before accepting her to the RN program. The audiologist concluded that Davis required lip-read in order to fully understand audible communication. The school subsequently denied Davis entry, assuming her hearing loss would affect her ability to effective care for patients safely.
Last summer, my then twelve year old son was asked to participate in the National Junior Leaders Conference in Washington, DC. So, I packed our stuff and we headed for our nation's capital. While there, we visited the Supreme Court and my son, never having been there before, was simply awed. A short time later, we went to the Library of Congress. At the time (I don't know whether or not it's still there), there was a display -- three or four rooms big dedicated to the Supreme Court case Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. While the case was something that Nicholas (my son) and I had talked about on a few occasions, it was interesting to watch him as he navigated through the rooms that had photographs, court documents, newspaper articles, and other memorabilia of the case and the people involved with it. About thirty minutes into our time there, he started to cry softly, but he continued making his way through the display. He went to every single display in those several rooms; he didn't want to leave until he had seen everything and read everything. When we finally left (almost four hours after we arrived), he said to me, "It's disgraceful the way our country treated black people; there was no honor in any of it."
Most Americans would claim a cop killer should be put to death which is what Scott D Cheever will face if he loses in the Supreme Court of the United States. Scott D Cheever and the state of Kansas argued before Supreme Court of the United States on October 16, 2013. The question posed before the court was when a criminal defendant affirmatively introduces expert testimony that he lacked the requisite mental state to commit capital murder of a law enforcement officer due to the alleged temporary and long-term effects of the defendant’s methamphetamine use, does the state violate the defendant’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination by rebutting the defendant’s mental state defense with evidence from a court-ordered mental evaluation of the defendant? The answer is no, the United States Supreme Court should reverse the decision of the Kansas Supreme Court because his fifth amendment’s rights were not violated.
He was a man whose very words struck fear into the hearts of his listeners. Acknowledged as one of the most powerful religious speakers of the era, he spearheaded the Great Awakening. “This was a time when the intense fervor of the first Puritans had subsided somewhat” (Heyrmen 1) due to a resurgence of religious zeal (Stein 1) in colonists through faith rather than predestination. Jonathan Edwards however sought to arouse the religious intensity of the colonists (Edwards 1) through his preaching. But how and why was Edwards so successful? What influenced him? How did he use diction and symbolism to persuade his listener, and what was the reaction to his teachings? In order to understand these questions one must look at his life and works to understand how he was successful. In his most influential sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Jonathan Edwards’ persuasive language awakened the religious fervor that lay dormant in colonial Americans and made him the most famous puritan minister of the Great Awakening in North America.
The case of brown v. board of education was one of the biggest turning points for African Americans to becoming accepted into white society at the time. Brown vs. Board of education to this day remains one of, if not the most important cases that African Americans have brought to the surface for the better of the United States. Brown v. Board of Education was not simply about children and education (Silent Covenants pg 11); it was about being equal in a society that claims African Americans were treated equal, when in fact they were definitely not. This case was the starting point for many Americans to realize that separate but equal did not work. The separate but equal label did not make sense either, the circumstances were clearly not separate but equal. Brown v. Board of Education brought this out, this case was the reason that blacks and whites no longer have separate restrooms and water fountains, this was the case that truly destroyed the saying separate but equal, Brown vs. Board of education truly made everyone equal.
In 2001 statistics reported by the United States Department of Education indicated that during 1997-1998 African American students received 8.3% of bachelor’s degrees awarded. Concurrently, Hispanic students as well as Asian or Pacific Islander students received 6.0%, while American Indian/Alaskan Native students only accounted for .7%. Although statistics from agencies who report differ, clearly on a national level, minority students
The Brown vs Board of Education as a major turning point in African American. Brown vs Board of Education was arguably the most important cases that impacted the African Americans and the white society because it brought a whole new perspective on whether “separate but equal” was really equal. The Brown vs Board of Education was made up of five different cases regarding school segregation. “While the facts of each case are different, the main issue in each was the constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation in public schools ("HISTORY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION") .”
...eople that went to jail because of the confusion with the insanity defense and the law has become unfavorable towards the insanity defense. As the New York Times says,” Congress barred federal courts from finding defendants legally insane “merely” because they were too mentally ill to have avoided committing the crime.” This means that mentally unstable people are going to jail untreated. The insanity defense has come to questioning our morals. When someone is mentally unstable, do they deserve to be endure the sometimes harsh punishments of our law or should they be treated for their illness in a psychiatric hospital?
Affirmative action has been a controversial topic ever since it was established in the 1960s to right past wrongs against minority groups, such as African Americans, Hispanics, and women. The goal of affirmative action is to integrate minorities into public institutions, like universities, who have historically been discriminated against in such environments. Proponents claim that it is necessary in order to give minorities representation in these institutions, while opponents say that it is reverse discrimination. Newsweek has a story on this same debate which has hit the nation spotlight once more with a case being brought against the University of Michigan by some white students who claimed that the University’s admissions policies accepted minority students over them, even though they had better grades than the minority students. William Symonds of Business Week, however, thinks that it does not really matter. He claims that minority status is more or less irrelevant in college admissions and that class is the determining factor.
Much of my skepticism over the insanity defense is how this act of crime has been shifted from a medical condition to coming under legal governance. The word "insane" is now a legal term. A nuerological illness described by doctors and psychiatrists to a jury may explain a person's reason and behavior. It however seldom excuses it. The most widely known rule in...
Blau, GL, H McGinley, and R Pasewark. “ Understanding the Use of the Insanity Defense. ”Journal of Clinical Psychology 49.3 (1993): 435-440. MEDLINE. 10 May. 2014.
Minorities are a growing segment of the population. However, this group continues to be underrepresented in the area of post secondary education. Obtaining an advanced degree remains a likely predictor of future career success. The problem facing the minority student is that barriers persist which continue to hinder enrollment, retention, and graduation rates in institutions of higher education. These barriers must be identified and examined and solutions offered if college completion rates are to be increased for this population.
The insanity defense pertains that the issue of the concept of insanity which defines the extent to which a person accused of crimes may be alleviated of criminal responsibility by reason of mental disease. “The term insanity routinely attracts widespread public attention that is far out of proportion to the defense’s impact on criminal justice” (Butler,133). The decision of this defense is solely determined by the trial judge and the jury. They determine if a criminal suffers from a mental illness. The final determination of a mental disease is solely on the jury who uses evidence and information drawn from an expert witness. The result of such a determination places the individual accused, either in a mental facility, incarcerated or released from all charges. Due to the aforementioned factors, there are many problems raised by the insanity defense. Some problems would be the actual possibility of determining mental illness, justify the placement of the judged “mentally ill” offenders and the total usefulness of such a defense. In all it is believed that the insanity defense should be an invalid defense and that it is useless and should potentially be completely abolished.