Affirmative action policies have been controversial since their inception in the 1960s.Define what affirmative action policies are and discuss their main goals.Describe three prominent Supreme Court decisions associated with affirmative action.

There are two components to this question.
a.Goals of affirmative action: Affirmative action policies seek to redress past injustices against specified groups by making special efforts to provide members of these groups with access to educational and employment opportunities.An affirmative action policy uses two novel approaches: (1)positive or benign discrimination in which race or some other status is counted as a positive rather than negative factor and (2)compensatory action to favor members of the disadvantaged group who themselves may never have been the victims of discrimination.
b.Supreme Court cases: There are a number of important Supreme Court decisions touching on affirmative action including Regents of the University of California v.Bakke (which found that quotas and separate admissions standards for minorities were unconstitutional but race and ethnicity could be used in the admissions process),the University of Michigan cases (which rejected point systems for university admissions but upheld individualized affirmative action policies that were designed to promote diversity in the educational environment ),and Fisher v.University of Texas (which found that a school's affirmative action programs discriminating in favor of black students must be subjected to the same "strict scrutiny" as a program that would discriminate against black students).