. J.A. Croson Co., Adarand Constructors v. Pena, and Shaw v. Reno. After reviewing many of the cases that O'Connor was involved in, it seems as though she is the key voice on the Supreme Court in affirmative action cases.O'Connor continues her excellence when she delivers the opinion of Shaw v. Reno. In 1993 North Carolina had voting districts revised to create two Black majority districts. One of these districts was no wider than an interstate highway and some towns had as many as three districts. This created a 14th Amendment issue under the Equal Protection Clause. Less than ten years ago the Court was having to correct the states on 14th Amendment grounds. The Supreme Court continues to attempt to fix past wrongs with hopes to create a color blind Constitution. O'Connor is leading this charge to right the wrongs of our past in hopes to swing the pendulum in favor of the oppressed. These views do not support a color-blind interpretation of current doctrine. Her newest equal protection jurisprudence means that the strict scrutiny applied in racial preferences is not exact in theory, disastrous in fact, but rather lowers the demands of strict scrutiny to allow some government flexibility in view of the persistence of racial discrimination and its effects. For instance, Justice O'Connor would allow some racial preference as a remedial measure even where a governmental actor has not discriminated in the past and probably, at least in higher education, as a forward-looking non-remedial measure to attain goals such as diversity, vindicating Bakke. On the other hand, the application of even a lowered strict scrutiny standard involves a departure from the Burger and early Rehnquist Courts' fairly permissive approach towards remedial and other non-threatening racial preferences, especially federal ones. Her new standard is especially rigorous in the way she votes.Looming over the public and judicial debate over racial preference is t...
