Equality

Another central value in American political culture is equality. Of all the values we hold dear,
equality is probably the one we cast most clearly in procedural versus substantive terms.
Equality in America means government should guarantee equality of treatment, of access,
of opportunity, but not equality of result. People should have equal access to run the race,
but we don’t expect everyone to finish in the same place or indeed to start from the same
place. Thus we believe in political equality (one person, one vote) and equality before the
law—that the law shouldn’t make unreasonable distinctions among people the basis for
treating them differently, and that all people should have equal access to the legal system.

One problem the courts have faced is deciding what counts as a reasonable distinction.
Can the law justifiably discriminate between—that is, treat differently—men and women,
minorities and white Protestants, rich and poor, young and old? When the rules treat people
differently, even if the goal [Page 46]is to make them more equal in the long run, many
Americans get very upset. Witness the controversy surrounding affirmative action policies in
this country. The point of such policies is to allow special opportunities to members of
groups that have been discriminated against in the past, to remedy the long-term effects of
that discrimination. For many Americans, such policies violate our commitment to
procedural solutions. They wonder how treating people unequally can be fair.