Title
Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
2004
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.
Disciplines
Civil Rights and Discrimination | Constitutional Law | Labor and Employment Law | Law | Law and Race
Recommended Citation
Bert I. Huang,
The "Inexorable Zero",
Harvard Law Review, Vol. 117, p. 1215, 2004
(2004).
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, Law and Race Commons