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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Compensatory Justice - Literature of Liberty, April/June 1978, vol. 1, No. 2

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Subject Area: Political Theory

Compensatory Justice - Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty, April/June 1978, vol. 1, No. 2 [1978]

Edition used:

Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and later by the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio.

Part of: Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, 20 vols. 19781-982

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Compensatory Justice

Thomas Sowell

  • University of California, Los Angeles

“Affirmative Action Reconsidered.” The Public Interest 42 (Winter 1976): 47–65.

Affirmative action is a vague legal concept which in the name of justice purports to remedy previous discrimination by actively promoting and encouraging the hiring of minority individuals. As we examine the intention, concepts, and actual effects of affirmative action policies, we find they have done more harm than good. Administration of the Civil Rights Act has led to what sponsors of the legislation did not intend; in fact, they said it would not happen. The burden of proof of discrimination has been placed on employers whose proportional representation of employees by race or sex does not measure up to federal agency standards.

Bureaucratic nightmares have been created by affirmative action considerations in academic hiring. Academic administrators, desiring to preserve federal subsidies, increasingly overturn the long-standing practice of academic hiring. Academic departments who are in the best position to judge a professor's qualifications no longer have a say—or they are pressured to act in a way that will not turn off the federal spigot.

While hardly advancing the position of minorities and females, affirmative action policies create the impression that hardwon achievements of these groups are conferred benefits. Here and there, affirmative action has caused some individuals to be hired who would otherwise not have been hired, but it is a doubtful gain in the larger context of attaining self-respect and the respect of others.