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Equal Employment Opportunity and the Mobilization of Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Paul Burstein  and
Kathleen Monaghan
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Abstract

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During the 1960s and 1970s the American social movement for equal employment opportunity (EEO) succeeded in getting Congress and the courts to prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and sex. We believe that the effectiveness of EEO laws depends not just upon their passage, however, but also upon their continuing successful mobilization. This is the first article to describe quantitatively the extent and outcomes of the mobilization of EEO laws at the appellate court level. It shows that mobilization is increasing; that the federal government and various interest groups are actively involved in the enforcement process; that much is at stake in many EEO cases; that alleged victims of discrimination win their court cases over half the time; and that reverse discrimination in EEO does not seem to be a serious problem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , 1986 , pp. 355 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

The authors would like to thank Elizabeth Bartholet, Robert Belton, James Blumstein, Claude Fischer, Jack Gibbs, Florence Katz, and David Knoke for helpful advice and comments; Peter Harris and Jan Grigsby for help in the development of the coding scheme and in data collection; and Peter Wood for assistance in data collection. Work on this paper was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the Vanderbilt University Research Council.

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