The 'Effects' of Civil Rights Policy: A Comparative Analysis of Voting Rights, Equal Employment, and Fair Housing Legislation

1964年至1968年间，国会颁布了三项影响深远的民权法规，禁止在投票、就业和住房方面的种族歧视。然而，并不是所有的方法都同样有效。民权政策学者一致认为，投票权是迄今为止三者中最成功的；公平住房政策总体上是失败的；这项平等就业政策取得了中等程度的成效。因此，这一提议的动机是一个直截了当的研究问题：为什么这些主要的民权法律都经历了如此不同的结果？研究者建议通过对投票权、平等就业和公平住房执法进行比较分析来回答这个问题。挑战传统的关于民权政策结果的政治制度理论，作者提出了一种以法律为中心的解释，这种解释源于法律和社会学术界正在进行的争论。作者认为，每个法规的文本是如何被立法者、机构管理者和联邦法院合法地构建和解释的，这是理解为什么一些民权政策比其他政策做得更好或更差的关键。具体而言，作者提出了以下核心假设：投票权、平等就业和公平住房政策的不同结果可以通过每种政策在多大程度上纳入并编纂了以群体为中心的“效果检验”来定义、证明和纠正非法歧视来解释。以群体为中心的效果检验侧重于系统性群体劣势而非个人抱怨，侧重于歧视性后果而非歧视性意图，侧重于实质性群体结果而非正式程序正义。这些数据将主要由政府和非政府的原始历史文件组成，这些文件将在华盛顿特区的各个档案馆收集。这些数据将使用分析叙事来指导这三个民权政策结果案例的实证和理论比较。本研究将阐明立法意图与立法效果之间的关系。调查结果将有助于更好地了解立法设计如何对确保实现立法目的的实施至关重要。

Between 1964 and 1968, Congress enacted three far-reaching civil rights statutes banning racial discrimination in voting, employment, and housing. Not all were equally effective, however. Civil rights policy scholars concur that voting rights was by far the most successful of the three; that fair housing policy was a general failure; and that equal employment policy achieved a moderate level of effectiveness. This proposal is thus motivated by a straightforward research question: why did each of these major civil rights laws experience such divergent outcomes?The investigator proposes to answer this question by conducting a comparative analysis of voting rights, equal employment, and fair housing enforcement. Challenging conventional political institutional theories of civil rights policy outcomes, the author proposes a law-centered explanation derived from on-going disputes within law and society scholarship. The author argues that how the text of each statute was legally constructed and interpreted by lawmakers, agency administrators, and federal courts holds the key to understanding why some civil rights policies did better/worse than others. Specifically, the author proposes the following core hypothesis: divergent outcomes in voting rights, equal employment, and fair housing policy can be explained by the extent to which each policy incorporated and codified the group-centered "effects test" for defining, proving, and remedying unlawful discrimination. The group-centered effects test focuses on systemic group disadvantage rather than individual complaints, discriminatory consequences rather than discriminatory intent, and substantive group results rather than formal procedural justice. The data will consist predominantly of primary historical documents - both governmental and nongovernmental - to be collected at various archives in the Washington, D.C. area. The data will be analyzed with the use of analytic narrative to guide empirical and theoretical comparisons across these three cases of civil rights policy outcomes.This research will illuminate the connection between legislative intent and legislative effects. The findings will contribute to a better understanding of how the design of legislation matters for insuring implementation that achieves the legislative purpose.