Topic: Strict Scrutiny & Affirmative Action
Senator: Feinstein
Date: SEPTEMBER 14, 2005
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FEINSTEIN: Let me ask you a question about strict scrutiny and affirmative action. You mentioned in several of your memos from the Reagan administration addressing affirmative action that the government should be color-blind.
And I would agree. And I wish we were there, but we're not there.
And because America is well-served by educating all her people well, do you personally subscribe not to quotas, but to measured efforts that can withstand strict scrutiny?
ROBERTS: If a measured effort that can withstand scrutiny is, I think, affirmative action of that sort, I think it's a very positive approach.
And I think people will disagree about exactly what the details should be. But the general notion...
FEINSTEIN: Such as Michigan, the University of Michigan.
ROBERTS: In the Michigan case, obviously, you have -- I always forget whether it's the law school -- but I think the law school program was upheld and the university program was struck down because of the differences in the program.
But efforts to ensure the full participation in all aspects of our society by people, without regard to their race, ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, all of those are efforts that I think are appropriate.
And at the time of the Reagan administration, President Reagan was at pains to make clear -- and I know the attorney general was, as well -- that, in opposing quotas -- and at the time it was a much stricter quote approach that was being proposed, set-asides -- they were not in any way opposed to what they regarded as beneficial affirmative action to bring minorities, women into all aspects of society. That's important, and as the court has explained, we all benefit from that.
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