Title
Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2011
Abstract
For over a quarter century, legal arguments about segregation, discrimination, and affirmative action have invoked the image of the "inexorable zero" - complete absence of any women or minorities at a given school or workplace. Yet as evocative as the phrase might be, its precise doctrinal import has remained elusive. This Note recounts the original use of the concept in a landmark Title VII case and documents a current circuit split. It then articulates theoretical grounds upon which the concept’s intuitive appeal might rest. Finally, it excavates a further, more complex rationale that the Supreme Court may have contemplated at the concept’s genesis.
Recommended Citation
Bert I. Huang,
The 'Inexorable Zero',
Harvard Law Review, Vol. 117, No. 4, p. 1215, 2004
(2011).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1575
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Labor and Employment Law Commons