Board of Regents V. Bakke Mock Trial-Regents' Legal Argument:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Honor, I stand before you today to cement the petitioner's case that the use of racial quotas in higher education admissions is not only absolutely necessary to ensure equality of opportunity, but is permitted under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. 

African Americans in this nation have been treated as second class citizens since the founding of this nation. We live in a country that was founded on the principle that "all men are created equal" yet our nation was also founded on the antithesis of equality: slavery. 

For a nation that was founded on the idealistic principle of  equality of opportunity, the reality has been much, much darker. The African Americans of our nation were condemned to a life of involuntary servitude for the first half of our nation's existence.

Even after the 14th Amendment was put in place, for the first half of  its existence it was largely a moot point. In fact, as late as 1927, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the case Buck V. Bell summed up the 14th Amendment Equal Protection clause as "the last resort of constitutional arguments" making a mockery of the most fundamental of rights for African American equality. 

Not only this, but the separate but equal clause was still in place until just 24 years ago with the landmark case Brown V. Board. It is since that we have begun to take the 14th Amendment seriously as a nation and a court system. 

Considering how often the courts had to remind school boards to desegregate, and against all of this history, it is clear that Bakke's argument that "laws must be colorblind" are a wishful dream and not a description of reality.  

People who deem to have been created equal since the beginning of this nation, and who clearly have not been, are the reason why a strict interpretation of the Equal Protection clause is necessary. We must use this law for its intended purpose, to ensure the equal treatment of African Americans in society. 

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title XI, protects people from discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance; public schools and universities being the prime example. 

Title XI clearly only prohibits racial discrimination from states or agencies, it does not bar the preferential treatment of racial minorities in order to "remedy past societal discrimination to the point where such action is consistent with the 14th Amendment" Clearly, there has been plenty of past societal discrimination to request that we finally start giving minorities the "full benefits of American life" that they have historically been excluded from. 

In the Congressional debates for the Civil Rights Act, Congress agreed that African Americans were being discriminated against in federally funded programs necessitating the passing of this law. If the Constitution required "color blindness" Congress would enact such a law, but it in fact did the opposite, proving that there is a need for the preferential treatment of minorities by law. 

In order to re-color our historically checkered past, the court must make the decision today to allow quotas in admission decisions to ensure that African Americans truly do receive Equal Protection under the law through ensuring the equality of their opportunities.