ABSTRACT
William Bradford Reynolds said publicly that punitive damages should be assessed against employers who were guilty of discrimination. Reynolds insisted that individuals must show they had been injured before the courts ordered that special measures be taken for their benefit. It might seem like a small point, yet insistence on victim specificity would end quotas and all that Reynolds considered objectionable about the civil rights agenda of the 1970s. Reynolds was more inclined to battle for principle and to ignore the consequences. Reynolds and Lee could have made the narrow argument that dispensing with seniority was not an honest effort to implement the terms of the original decree. Reynolds and Lee began by noting that Section 703(h) of the Civil Rights Act protected seniority. Reynolds freely acknowledged that the United States had an "undeniable legacy of discrimination", but he differed from the major civil rights groups when it came to policies that were designed to remedy discrimination and its effects.
