The American Civil Rights Tradition: Anticlassification or Antisubordination
The American Civil Rights Tradition: Anticlassification or Antisubordination
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美国民权传统：反分类或反从属
DOI：
10.2202/1539-8323.1039
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发表时间：
2003
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Reva B. Siegel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Balkin;Reva B. Siegel
关于反歧视法理学发展的一个相当标准的故事认为，在20世纪70年代，美国最高法院断然拒绝了欧文·菲斯和其他反从属理论家的观点，并采用了一种相反且不一致的平等理论--反分类原则--该原则认为，政府不能根据种族等禁止的类别，公开或秘密地对人进行分类。在这篇文章中，我们从分析和历史的角度对这一标准描述提出了质疑。从标准观点来看，美国反歧视法体现了反分类原则。但正如我们在文章的分析部分所表明的那样，反分类原则本身并不起到决定反歧视法许多重要问题的作用。法院必须作出各种执行决定，才能适用反分类原则；正如我们通过各种例子表明的那样，法院并不以任何一致的方式作出这种执行决定。随着时间的推移，在法律的不同部分，法院执行反分类原则的方式不一致，这表明，反分类的论述掩盖了在确定反歧视法律将禁止哪些做法方面起到很大作用的其他价值观。换言之，反分类原则的适用不是固定的，也不是自我实施的。它可被援引为合法的传统地位安排，或对其提出挑战。国家对“基于种族的歧视”或“基于性别的歧视”的理解是一种社会结构，随着时间的推移而变化，以回应社会运动的抗议。随着社会抗议使某些做法失去合法性，法院往往会有意识或不自觉地被身份损害的看法所感动，发现他们以前没有发现的违反反分类原则的行为。从这一历史角度来看，美国民权法理学证明了反分类和反从属承诺是正确的。如果反分类的论述有时证明了我们将其与反从属联系在一起的价值观是正确的，那么从欧文·菲斯的开创性团体和平等保护条款开始，反从属学术在20世纪70年代崛起为一个独特的法律理论机构，有什么利害关系？在我们文章的历史部分，我们认为，反从属理论是对1968年大选后十年开始的政治紧缩的回应。随着国家和法院开始背离第二次重建的社会正义承诺--现在利用反分类言论的不确定性来合理化而不是破坏加强地位的关系--菲斯和其他人试图重申民权斗争的核心原则。菲斯深知，美国理解推动反对吉姆·克罗的斗争的原则的方式，将塑造美国未来面临关于种族正义问题的辩论的方式。这个集体记忆的问题在我们这个时代也在燃烧着。虽然最高法院和国家确实拒绝了菲斯和其他种族正义倡导者在20世纪70年代敦促的道路，但由于这些选择，反从属原则是美国宪法传统中一些不受信任的原则，这是非常错误的。正如本文所证明的那样，反从属原则以多种名义存在，深深植根于美国民权传统中，保留着它的核心和良知--尽管历史充分证明，这是美国经常在违背中遵守的那种原则。
A fairly standard story about the development of antidiscrimination jurisprudence argues that, during the 1970s, the United States Supreme Court decisively rejected the views of Owen Fiss and other antisubordination theorists, and adopted a contrary and inconsistent theory of equality-the anticlassification principle-which holds that the government may not classify people either overtly or surreptitiously on the basis of a forbidden category like race. In this essay, we challenge this standard account, on analytical and historical grounds. On the standard view, American antidiscrimination law reflects anticlassification principles. But as we show in the analytical section of the essay, the anticlassification principle does not itself do the work of deciding many important issues of antidiscrimination law. Courts must make a variety of implementing decisions in order to apply the anticlassification principle; and, as we demonstrate through a variety of examples, courts do not make such implementing decisions in any consistent manner. Inconsistency in the ways that courts have implemented the anticlassification principle, over time and in different parts of the law, suggests that the discourse of anticlassification conceals other values that do much of the work in determining which practices antidiscrimination law will enjoin. In other words, application of the anticlassification principle is not fixed, nor is the principle is self-implementing. It may be invoked to legitimate traditional status arrangements, or to challenge them. The nation's understanding of what it means to "discriminate on the basis of race" or to "discriminate on the basis of sex" is a social construction that shifts over time in response to social movement protest. As social protest delegitimates certain practices, courts are often moved, consciously or unconsciously, by perceptions of status harm, to find violations of the anticlassification principle where they saw none before. Considered from this historical vantage point, American civil rights jurisprudence vindicates both anticlassification and antisubordination commitments. If the discourse of anticlassification at times vindicates values that we associate with antisubordination, what was at stake in the rise of antisubordination scholarship as a distinct body of legal theory in the 1970s, beginning with Owen Fiss' pathbreaking Groups and the Equal Protection Clause? In the historical section of our essay, we argue that antisubordination theory was a response to the political retrenchment that began in the decade after the 1968 election. As nation and Court began to retreat from the social-justice commitments of the Second Reconstruction-now using the indeterminacy of anticlassification discourse to rationalize rather than to disrupt status-enforcing relations-Fiss and others sought to restate the principles at the heart of the civil rights struggle. Fiss well appreciated that the way in which the nation understood the principles animating the fight against Jim Crow would shape the way the nation faced debates about questions of racial justice in the future. This problem of collective memory is no less burning in our own day. While it is true that the Court and country refused the path that Fiss and other advocates of racial justice urged in the 1970s, it is deeply false that, in virtue of these choices, the antisubordination principle is some alien discredited Other in American constitutional tradition. As this essay demonstrates, the antisubordination principle lives by multiple names, deep in the American Civil Rights Tradition, remaining its core and its conscience-even if, as history amply attests, it is the kind of principle the nation has often honored in the breach.