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

民权政策的“效果”：投票权、平等就业和公平住房立法的比较分析

• 批准号: 0963418
• 负责人: Nicholas Pedriana
• 金额: $ 4.21万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-05-01 至 2012-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0963418&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Effects; Civil; Rights; Policy; Comparative

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 The data will consist predominantly of primary historical documents - both governmental and nongovernmental - to be collected at various archives in the Washington, D.C. area.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.

1964年至1968年，国会颁布了三项影响深远的民权法规，禁止选举、就业和住房方面的种族歧视。 然而，并非所有这些都同样有效。民权政策学者一致认为，投票权是迄今为止最成功的三个;公平住房政策是一个普遍的失败;平等就业政策取得了中等水平的有效性。因此，这一提议是由一个简单的研究问题所激发的：为什么这些主要的民权法律都经历了如此不同的结果？研究人员建议通过对投票权、平等就业和公平住房执法进行比较分析来回答这个问题。本文在对传统的民权政策结果的政治制度理论进行梳理的基础上，从法学和社会学的争论中提出了一种以法律为中心的解释。作者认为，立法者、机构管理者和联邦法院如何合法地构建和解释每一项法规的文本，是理解为什么一些民权政策比其他政策做得更好/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解释为每项政策纳入和编纂以群体为中心的“效果测试”，以定义，证明和补救非法歧视的程度。以群体为中心的效应检验侧重于系统性群体劣势而非个人投诉，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。这些数据将主要包括政府和非政府的主要历史文件，将在华盛顿，华盛顿特区的各个档案馆收集。本研究将以分析性叙述的方式对数据进行分析，以指导对这三个民权政策结果案例的实证和理论比较，阐明立法意图与立法效果之间的联系。调查结果将有助于更好地了解如何设计的立法事项，以确保实现立法目的的执行。