ABSTRACT
In The Constitutional Logic of Affirmative Action, Ronald J. Fiscus provides a tightly argued, persuasive philosophical-legal defense of proportional quotas. At the core of his argument is a rejection of the assertion that affirmative action harms innocent white males. Fiscus examines the Supreme Court's decisions regarding affirmative action to demonstrate that the justices accepted the argument that affirmative action programs punish the innocent. Fiscus' "exercise in logic" constitutes a valuable contribution to an understanding of the issues surrounding affirmative action insofar as it demonstrates how education, jobs, and other valuable resources would be distributed in a nonracist society. While Fiscus explains that proportional quotas do not harm white males, Lynch insists that affirmative action policies do harm innocent white men by excluding them from the jobs for which they are more qualified than members of the favored groups. For Taylor and Fiscus, affirmative action can serve as a means to achieve racial justice.
