how to conclude law essay

How to Write a First-Class Law Essay: Mastering the FIRAC Model

Law essays can be challenging, but they contribute significantly to the mastery of legal principles and enhancing a student’s legal research skills. A first-class law essay does not only demonstrate a thorough understanding of legal principles, but is also clearly structured and incredibly well-written. In this article, we will guide you on how to write a first-class law essay, delve into the FIRAC model of legal writing, and address frequently asked questions on law essay writing.

Below is an outline of the points that will be discussed in detail throughout the article:

Understanding the Essay Question and Planning

Comprehensive legal research, writing techniques for a first-class law essay, common faqs on law essay writing.

Table of Contents

The first step in writing a top-notch law essay is to understand the essay question and planning your response. You should take care to read and analyze the question provided, identifying the main issues, required legal areas, and the keywords that will guide your research. Create a rough essay plan, outlining the main arguments and research resources necessary to address the topic.

Thorough researched is necessary in order to write a first-class law essay.This involves examining relevant cases, statutes, academic articles, and other authoritative sources. It is crucial to:

• Build a strong foundation of understanding for the specific legal topics involved
• Identify any contrary viewpoints and conflicting interpretations of the law
• Familiarize yourself with critical legal developments that may affect your essay’s arguments

It is essential to keep track of your sources and their essential details, as you will need to reference them accurately in your essay.

Structuring a Law Essay: The FIRAC Model

The FIRAC model is a universally recognized method of organizing and presenting legal arguments in writing. It consists of:

Start by providing a concise and relevant summary of the facts and background of the issue beingaddressed. Be objective and neutral in your presentation, ensuring that your readers have a clear understanding of the context.

Clearly identify the specific legal issues that arise from the facts. This may involve direct questions or problems that need to be resolved by referring to legal authorities, such as legislation, case law, or academic commentary.

Set out the relevant legal rules, principles, and precedents that apply to the issues in question. Present a clear and comprehensive explanation of the legal authorities and how they apply to the facts.

d. Analysis:

In this section, critically analyze and weigh the various arguments and approaches concerning the legal issues at hand. Provide a detailed evaluation of the relevant legal authorities,discussing their strengths and weaknesses, and highlighting any ambiguities, disagreements, or gaps in the law that are relevant to the issues being addressed.

e. Conclusion:

Wrap up your essay by summarizing the main points, integrating your key findings and the implications of your analysis. Be sure to address the initial essay question and provide a clear answer or position based on your research and discussion. Finally, offer any recommendations or propose potential legal reforms if appropriate.

To ensure that your law essay stands out as first-class, it is essential to embrace effective writing techniques, such as:

• Clarity and precision: Use clear, concise language and avoid unnecessary jargon or verbosity. 2.Coherent organization: Organize your essay logically, ensuring that each section flows smoothly into the next.
• Strong argumentation: Build well-reasoned arguments supported by solid evidence, authoritative sources, and persuasive analysis.
• Critical thinking: Question assumptions, explore alternative viewpoints, and engage in thoughtful reflection and analysis.
• Proper citation and referencing: Adhere to a consistent citation style and accurately credit all sources used in your essay.
• Proofreading and editing: Always proofread and edit your essay meticulously, eliminating grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and awkward phrasing.

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about law essay writing:

How long should my law essay be?

The length of your law essay may vary, depending on the specific requirements and guidelines given by your instructor or institution. Typically, law essays range from 1,500 to 3,000 words, but it is crucial to adhere to the specified word count in your assignment.

How do I choose a citation style for my law essay?

Consult your assignment guidelines or ask your instructor for the preferred citation style used in legal writing at your institution, such as the Bluebook, Oxford Standard, or AGLC. Always use one citation style consistently throughout your essay.

Is it acceptable to use non-legal references in my essay?

While law essays primarily rely on legal authorities, it may be appropriate toinclude non-legal references, such as scholarly articles, reports, or empirical studies, to support your arguments or provide additional context. Always check with your instructor or assignment guidelines if you are unsure about using specific non-legal sources.

Can I use headings and subheadings in my law essay?

Headings and subheadings help organize your essay and guide your readers through your arguments. They are generally acceptable in law essays unless prohibited by your institution’s guidelines or your instructor’s preferences. Be sure to use a consistent formatting style for all headings and subheadings.

How can I avoid plagiarism in my law essay?

To avoid plagiarism, always accurately cite and reference any sources you use in your essay,whether they are direct quotes, paraphrased ideas, or summarized information. Also, ensure that your essay is primarily composed of your own original analysis and ideas, rather than relying too heavily on other sources. Make use of plagiarism-checking tools to identify potential areas of concern and correct them prior to submission.

By adhering to these guidelines and employing effective writing techniques, you can enhance the quality of your law essay and increase the likelihood of earning a first-class grade. Always remain diligent, focused, and committed to delivering thorough and engaging legal analysis throughout your academic writing endeavors.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Law Essays

In addition to following the guidelines and writing techniques, it’s important to avoid common mistakes when writing your law essay:

• Irrelevant or excessive detail : Stay focused on the essay question and avoid providing unnecessary or excessive details that don’t contribute to your central argument.
• Lack of structure: Ensure that your essay is logically organized, with clearly defined sections and a coherent flow from one section to another.
• Misunderstanding the question: Read the essay prompt carefully, and make sure you clearly understand what is being asked before drafting your response. Seek clarification if needed.
• Unsupported claims or arguments: Back up your claims with solid evidence and credible sources. Avoid makingassertions without sufficient justification or analysis.
• Overly complex language or jargon: Write in a clear and concise manner, using language that is accessible to your readers. Be mindful of using overly technical terms or legal jargon without explanation.
• Plagiarism: Always provide proper citation and referencing for all sources used. Take the necessary steps to ensure your work is original and does not plagiarize from other sources.
• Inadequate proofreading: Thoroughly proofread and edit your essay to correct grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and clumsy phrasing. Additionally, make sure your citations and references are accurate and formatted correctly.

By avoiding these common mistakes and adhering to the aforementioned guidelines andwriting techniques, you will significantly improve the quality of your law essay and increase your chances of achieving a high grade. Remember that practice makes perfect, and continually refining your skills in legal writing and analysis will contribute to your overall success in your academic and professional pursuits. So, stay committed, diligent, and focused on producing well-reasoned and coherent essays that demonstrate your understanding and mastery of legal principles and concepts. 

Happy writing!

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How to Write Conclusions for Law Essays

The conclusion of a law essay serves as a crucial component, providing a final opportunity to leave a lasting impression on your reader. It is your chance to succinctly summarise the key points, reinforce your thesis, and leave your audience with a sense of closure. Here is a guide on how to write a compelling conclusion for your law essay:

Summarise key arguments: Begin your conclusion by summarising the main arguments presented in your essay. Remind your reader of the key points that support your thesis statement. Be concise but ensure that you cover the critical aspects of your analysis.

Restate the thesis: Reinforce the main thesis of your essay. However, avoid mere repetition. Instead, consider rephrasing your thesis to emphasise its significance in light of the evidence and arguments you've presented throughout the essay. This demonstrates a nuanced understanding of your topic.

Address counterarguments (if applicable): If your essay delves into counterarguments, the conclusion is an apt place to address them. Briefly acknowledge opposing viewpoints and reassert why your position is more compelling or supported by stronger evidence.

Highlight legal implications: Emphasise the legal implications of your arguments. Discuss how your analysis contributes to the broader legal context or its potential impact on existing laws, policies, or future legal developments. This adds depth to your conclusion and showcases a broader understanding of the subject matter.

Provide a resolution (if applicable): Some law essays involve presenting a problem or a legal question. If this is the case, your conclusion can offer a resolution or propose potential avenues for further research and analysis. This demonstrates a forward-thinking approach to the legal issues discussed.

Connect with the introduction: Establish a connection with the introduction. This can be done by revisiting a theme, quote, or anecdote introduced at the beginning. Creating a sense of circularity reinforces the coherence of your essay and provides a satisfying conclusion for the reader.

Avoid introducing new information: The conclusion is not the place to introduce new arguments, evidence, or information. Keep your focus on summarising and synthesising the existing content. Introducing new elements can confuse your reader and dilute the impact of your concluding remarks.

End with a strong closing statement: Conclude your essay with a powerful and memorable closing statement. This might involve reiterating the broader significance of your findings, issuing a call to action, or leaving the reader with a thought-provoking question related to the legal topic.

Revise and edit: Once you have drafted your conclusion, take the time to revise and edit. Ensure clarity, coherence, and conciseness. Check that your conclusion aligns with the overall tone and argumentative style of your essay.

Remember, an effective conclusion not only summarises your essay but also leaves a lasting impression. It should leave your reader with a sense of resolution and a clear understanding of the importance of your legal analysis.

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How to Write a Law Essay

Last Updated: August 11, 2023

This article was co-authored by Clinton M. Sandvick, JD, PhD . Clinton M. Sandvick worked as a civil litigator in California for over 7 years. He received his JD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998 and his PhD in American History from the University of Oregon in 2013. This article has been viewed 239,884 times.

In a college legal studies course, and in some law school courses, you may be required to write a research paper addressing a legal topic. These essays can be tricky, because the law is constantly evolving. To secure a top grade, your essay must be well-researched and coherently argued. With proper planning and research, you can write a stellar legal essay. [Note: this article does not address how to write law school essay exams or bar exam questions, which require different techniques and strategies.]

Choosing an Essay Topic

• A narrow essay prompt might read, "Discuss the evolution and impact of the exclusionary rule of evidence in the United States." A broad prompt might read, "Discuss how a civil rights movement led to changes in federal and/or state law."
• If you are invited to choose your own topic, your professor may require you to submit a written proposal or outline to ensure that your chosen topic complies with the prompt. If you are not sure if your topic is within the parameters of the prompt, propose your topic to your professor after class or during his or her office hours.

• Hopefully, your course readings, lectures, and class discussions will have given you enough background knowledge to select a topic. If not, review your class notes and browse online for additional background information.
• It is not uncommon to change your topic after doing some research. You may end up narrowing the questions your essay will answer, or changing your topic completely.

• If you can, try to focus on an are of the law that affects you. For example, if your family is involved in agriculture, you may be interested in writing about water use regulations .

Researching Your Topic

• If you are prohibited from citing internet resources, you can still use online research to guide you to physical primary and secondary sources in your local library or bookstore.

• Look at footnotes, citations, and indexes in tertiary sources. These are great for finding books, articles, and legal cases that are relevant to your topic. Also take note of the names of authors, who may have written multiple works on your topic.

• Also find search engines for related fields, such as history or political science. Ask your librarian to recommend specialized search engines tailored to other disciplines that may have contributed to your topic.

• Never cut and paste from the web into your notes or essay. This often leads to inadvertent plagiarism because students forget what is a quotation and what is paraphrasing. When gathering sources, paraphrase or add quotation marks in your outline.
• Plagiarism is a serious offense. If you ultimately hope to be a lawyer, an accusation of plagiarism could prevent you from passing the character and fitness review.

Drafting the Essay

• An effective introduction takes the reader out of his world and into the world of your essay. [2] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source Explain why the subject is important and briefly summarizes the rest of your argument. After reading your introduction, your reader should know what you are going to discuss and in what order you will be discussing it.
• Be prepared to revise your introduction later. Summarizing your essay will be easier after you have written it, especially if you deviate from your outline.

• State each argument of your essay as a statement that, if true, would support your thesis statement.
• Provide supporting information drawn from primary and secondary sources that support your argument. Remember to cite your sources.
• Provide your own original analysis, explaining to the reader that based on the primary and secondary sources you have presented, the reader should be persuaded by your argument.

Formatting Your Essay

Proofreading the Essay

• Open up a Word document. On the Quick Access Toolbar at the top, click on the down arrow. The words “Customize Quick Access Toolbar” will appear when you hover over the arrow for two seconds.
• Click on the arrow. Then click on “More Commands.”
• In the “Choose commands from” drop-down box, choose “All commands.”
• Scroll down to find “Speak.” Highlight this and then click “add.” Then click “okay.” Now the Speak function should appear on your Quick Access Toolbar.
• Highlight the text you want read back to you, and then click on the Speak icon. The text will be read back to you.

• Do not rely on a spell checker exclusively, as it will not catch typos like "statute" versus "statue."

Revising the Essay

• You can share the essay with someone outside of class, but a classmate more likely has the requisite knowledge to understand the subject matter of the essay.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/2/53/
• ↑ http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/introductions/
• ↑ https://www.legalbluebook.com/
• ↑ https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Using-the-Speak-text-to-speech-feature-459e7704-a76d-4fe2-ab48-189d6b83333c

About This Article

To write a law essay, start by writing a thesis statement on your chosen topic. Phrase your thesis statement as an argument, using words like “because” or “therefore” to state your point. Write an outline of the arguments you will use to support your thesis statement, then use that outline to build the body of your paper. Include any counter-arguments, but use your evidence to convince the reader why your point of view is valid, and the counter-arguments are not. Be sure to cite all of your sources in the format preferred by your professor. For tips from our reviewer on finding the best sources for your topic, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Write a First-Class Law Essay

Studying law at university entails lots of essay writing. This article takes you through the key steps to writing a top law essay.

Writing a law essay can be a challenging task. As a law student, you’ll be expected to analyse complex legal issues and apply legal principles to real-world scenarios. At the same time, you’ll need to be able to communicate your ideas clearly and persuasively. In this article, we’ll cover some top tips to guide you through the process of planning, researching, structuring and writing a first-class law essay with confidence. 

1. Start In Advance

Give yourself plenty of time to plan, research and write your law essay. Always aim to start your law essay as soon as you have the question. Leaving it until the last minute does not only create unnecessary stress, but it also leaves you insufficient time to write, reference and perfect your work.

2. Understand The Question

Do not begin until you fully comprehend the question. Take the time to read the question carefully and make sure that you understand what it’s asking you to do. Highlight key terms and annotate the question with definitions of key concepts and any questions that you have have. Think about how the question links back to what you’ve learned during your lectures or through your readings.

3. Conduct Thorough Research

Conducting thorough research around your topic is one of the most fundamental parts of the essay writing process. You should aim to use a range of relevant sources, such as cases, academic articles, books and any other legal materials. Ensure that the information you collect is taken from relevant, reliable and up to date sources. Use primary over secondary material as much as possible.

Avoid using outdated laws and obscure blog posts as sources of information. Always aim to choose authoritative sources from experts within the field, such as academics, politicians, lawyers and judges. Using high-quality and authoritative sources and demonstrating profound and critical insight into your topic are what will earn you top marks.

4. Write A Detailed Plan

Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to plan your essay. When writing your plan, you’ll need to create an outline that clearly identifies the main points that you wish to make throughout your article. Try to write down what you wish to achieve in each paragraph, what concepts you want to discuss and arguments you want to make.

Your outline should be organised in a clear, coherent and logical manner to ensure that the person grading your essay can follow your line of thought and arguments easily.  You may also wish to include headings and subheadings to structure your essay effectively This makes it easier when it comes to writing the essay as starting without a plan can get messy. The essay must answer the question and nothing but the question so ensure all of your points relate to it.

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5. Write A Compelling Introduction

A great introduction should, firstly, outline the research topic.  The introduction is one of the most crucial parts of the law essay as it sets the tone for the rest of the paper. It should capture the readers attention and provide the background context on the topic. Most importantly, it should state the thesis of your essay.

When writing your introduction, avoid simply repeating the given question. Secondly, create a road map for the reader, letting them know how the essay will approach the question. Your introduction must be concise. The main body of the essay is where you will go into detail.

6. Include A Strong Thesis Statement

Your thesis should clearly set out the argument you are going to be making throughout your essay and should normally go in the introduction. Your thesis should adopt a clear stance rather than being overly general or wishy-washy. To obtain the best grades, you’ll need to show a unique perspective based upon a critical analysis of the topic rather than adopting the most obvious point of view.

Once you’ve conducted your research and had a chance to reflect on your topic, ask yourself whether you can prove your argument within the given word count or whether you would need to adopt a more modest position for your paper. Always have a clear idea of what your thesis statement is before you begin writing the content of your essay. 

7. Present the Counter-argument

To demonstrate your deeper understanding of the topic, it’s important to show your ability to consider the counter-arguments and address them in a careful and reasoned manner. When presenting your counterarguments, aim to depict them in the best possible light, aiming to be fair and reasonable before moving on to your rebuttal. To ensure that your essay is convincing, you will need to have a strong rebuttal that explains why your argument is stronger and more persuasive. This will demonstrate your capacity for critical analysis, showing the reader that you have carefully considered differing perspectives before coming to a well-supported conclusion.

8. End With A Strong Conclusion

Your conclusion is your opportunity to summarise the key points made throughout your essay and to restate the thesis statement in a clear and concise manner.  Avoid simply repeating what has already been mentioned in the body of the essay. For top grades, you should use the conclusion as an opportunity to provide critical reflection and analysis on the topic. You may also wish to share any further insights or recommendations into alternative avenues to consider or implications for further research that could add value to the topic. 

9. Review The Content Of Your Essay

Make sure you factor in time to edit the content of your essay.  Once you’ve finished your first draft, come back to it the next day. Re-read your essay with a critical perspective. Do your arguments make sense? Do your paragraphs flow in a logical manner? You may also consider asking someone to read your paper and give you critical feedback. They may be able to add another perspective you haven’t considered or suggest another research paper that could add value to your essay. 

10. Proofread For Grammatical Mistakes

Once you’re happy with the content of your essay, the last step is to thoroughly proofread your essay for any grammatical errors. Ensure that you take time to ensure that there are no grammar, spelling or punctuation errors as these can be one of the easiest ways to lose marks. You can ask anyone to proofread your paper, as they would not necessarily need to have a legal background – just strong grammar and spelling skills! 

11. Check Submission Guidelines

Before submitting, ensure that your paper conforms with the style, referencing and presentation guidelines set out by your university. This includes the correct font, font size and line spacing as well as elements such as page numbers, table of content etc. Referencing is also incredibly important as you’ll need to make sure that you are following the correct referencing system chosen by your university. Check your university’s guidelines about what the word count is and whether you need to include your student identification number in your essay as well. Be thorough and don’t lose marks for minor reasons!

12. Use Legal Terms Accurately

Always make sure that you are using legal terms accurately throughout your essay. Check an authoritative resource if you are unsure of any definitions. While being sophisticated is great, legal jargon if not used correctly or appropriately can weaken your essay. Aim to be concise and to stick to the point. Don’t use ten words when only two will do.

12. Create a Vocabulary Bank

One recurring piece of advice from seasoned law students is to take note of phrases from books and articles, key definitions or concepts and even quotes from your professors. When it comes to writing your law essay, you will have a whole range of ideas and vocabulary that will help you to develop your understanding and thoughts on a given topic. This will make writing your law essay even easier!

13. Finally, Take Care of Yourself

Last but certainly not least, looking after your health can improve your attitude towards writing your law essay your coursework in general. Sleep, eat, drink and exercise appropriately. Take regular breaks and try not to stress. Do not forget to enjoy writing the essay!

Words by Karen Fulton

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Learn How to Perfectly Structure a Law Essay

A law essay needs an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. usually, each body paragraph contains one idea. the introduction features one paragraph that highlights the topic and concludes with a thesis statement. the conclusion is a summary of the introduction and the key points in the body paragraphs. .

Concision is a key issue that requires attention in a law essay. Every point you introduce requires to be supported by authorities. It can be a statute or a case law. Pay attention to the structure and type of law essay you are writing, such as compare and contrast, critical analysis, argumentative, and descriptive. 

Pay attention to the key features of a law essay

A law essay focuses on legal issues which can be both current and historical. You can compare and contrast the application of justice in the past and modern society. You could look at key amendments to the constitution. Sometimes, the lecturer could be specific on the topic to cover. It is beneficial to request help from  assignment services  if you have difficulties writing or lack time. 

The key features of an attractive law essay include the following:

● A strongly defended and clear thesis statement

● Use of correct references and quotations

● Writing concisely in the right style

● Following a well-defined structure and flow

● Expressing a high creativity level based on deeply researched arguments that respond to the essay question. 

● Being attentive to details while focusing on the essay question

● Staying within the legal frameworks and using the simplest language possible

Find an attractive topic

The professor will love your essay if he notices you are keen when selecting the topic. It must be aligned with the essay question and directly address the issue at hand. Every legal paper provides an analysis of the law, which requires you to study the law and research its application widely. The information you get will give you broader ideas on the topic to choose. Structure the topic in a way that makes it attractive in the eyes of the reader. 

Create your writing plan

The amount of information required in a law essay is huge. You will be required to gather it from multiple sources and consolidate it into the most appealing essay. This calls for proper planning from the starting point to the end. Since you require ample time, the first item should be the amount of time you need to complete a detailed law essay. Give yourself enough time and, if possible, the maximum time. 

If you have two weeks to the submission date, plan how you will do your research. Based on the type of essay you are writing, research to know the types of sources that will provide the right information. Plan how you will access each source, the amount of information to get from there, and how to get it. It is crucial to record each source for the sake of references. Create a writing plan based on the information available to you. This includes the points to use in each section and how to use them. 

Develop an outline

The outline helps to make sure you do not leave out any important point or section. If you fail to create a good outline, your essay law essay structure will be flawed. The outline draft includes every point that you will use in the three main parts of an essay. There will be one key point for the introduction, three or four points for the body, and another point for the conclusion. Write guided by the outline and then write the final draft based on the outline draft. Pay attention to these three parts. 

While you create the plan, it is important to note that you need the best resume to apply as an intern or to find your first job. To ensure success, approach a  write my essay for me  service. Getting professional help is your best option to impress the recruiters who scan your CV as the first thing when you apply for a job.

Introduction

In this section, state clearly what the essay is about. Most creatively, inform the reader what your discussion is about. Hook the readers by making the introduction engaging and interesting. The paragraph concludes with a thesis statement that tells the reader how you will interpret the law and its importance in the topic. 

Mostly, the body of a law essay consists of three or four paragraphs. It is the main part of the essay and covers the key arguments. This is the section where you provide your evidence to the point stated in your thesis statement. Each body paragraph is a unique unit that covers one point plus its supporting evidence. 

A good body paragraph structure covers three main sections. It starts with the main sentence, which introduces the key argument. The middle part contains the supporting information to the point. You may include relevant minor points to provide greater weight to the main point. The final section is the concluding sentence which crowns the entire paragraph. It is also the transition sentence into the next paragraph and point. 

The conclusion is the last paragraph of your law essay. It reaffirms your points in the body and the thesis statement. Provide a summary of your main point in this section. You may provide a suggestion about what might need further research but avoid introducing a new point. 

Issues to pay attention to

A good essay structure should be simple and easy to follow. Stay within the academic writing guidelines and language. Make sure every source used is referenced based on the citation style of law essays. Use phrases such as it is possible that …, this question deals with…, and it can be argued that …

Writing a law essay is different from writing a case file. You are required to demonstrate your understanding of the law in your araguments. Each argument should be systematically and logically developed. Keep the structure neat, coherent, and effective. With the right information, it should not be difficult thing to write a law essay. What is required from you is a high level of creativity and thinking outside the box. 

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• How to conclude an essay | Interactive example

How to Conclude an Essay | Interactive Example

Published on January 24, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The conclusion is the final paragraph of your essay . A strong conclusion aims to:

• Tie together the essay’s main points
• Show why your argument matters
• Leave the reader with a strong impression

Your conclusion should give a sense of closure and completion to your argument, but also show what new questions or possibilities it has opened up.

This conclusion is taken from our annotated essay example , which discusses the history of the Braille system. Hover over each part to see why it’s effective.

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

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Table of contents

Step 1: return to your thesis, step 2: review your main points, step 3: show why it matters, what shouldn’t go in the conclusion, more examples of essay conclusions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay conclusion.

To begin your conclusion, signal that the essay is coming to an end by returning to your overall argument.

Don’t just repeat your thesis statement —instead, try to rephrase your argument in a way that shows how it has been developed since the introduction.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Next, remind the reader of the main points that you used to support your argument.

Avoid simply summarizing each paragraph or repeating each point in order; try to bring your points together in a way that makes the connections between them clear. The conclusion is your final chance to show how all the paragraphs of your essay add up to a coherent whole.

To wrap up your conclusion, zoom out to a broader view of the topic and consider the implications of your argument. For example:

• Does it contribute a new understanding of your topic?
• Does it raise new questions for future study?
• Does it lead to practical suggestions or predictions?
• Can it be applied to different contexts?
• Can it be connected to a broader debate or theme?

Whatever your essay is about, the conclusion should aim to emphasize the significance of your argument, whether that’s within your academic subject or in the wider world.

Try to end with a strong, decisive sentence, leaving the reader with a lingering sense of interest in your topic.

The easiest way to improve your conclusion is to eliminate these common mistakes.

Don’t include new evidence

Any evidence or analysis that is essential to supporting your thesis statement should appear in the main body of the essay.

The conclusion might include minor pieces of new information—for example, a sentence or two discussing broader implications, or a quotation that nicely summarizes your central point. But it shouldn’t introduce any major new sources or ideas that need further explanation to understand.

Don’t use “concluding phrases”

Avoid using obvious stock phrases to tell the reader what you’re doing:

• “In conclusion…”
• “To sum up…”

These phrases aren’t forbidden, but they can make your writing sound weak. By returning to your main argument, it will quickly become clear that you are concluding the essay—you shouldn’t have to spell it out.

Don’t undermine your argument

Avoid using apologetic phrases that sound uncertain or confused:

• “This is just one approach among many.”
• “There are good arguments on both sides of this issue.”
• “There is no clear answer to this problem.”

Even if your essay has explored different points of view, your own position should be clear. There may be many possible approaches to the topic, but you want to leave the reader convinced that yours is the best one!

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This conclusion is taken from an argumentative essay about the internet’s impact on education. It acknowledges the opposing arguments while taking a clear, decisive position.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

This conclusion is taken from a short expository essay that explains the invention of the printing press and its effects on European society. It focuses on giving a clear, concise overview of what was covered in the essay.

The invention of the printing press was important not only in terms of its immediate cultural and economic effects, but also in terms of its major impact on politics and religion across Europe. In the century following the invention of the printing press, the relatively stationary intellectual atmosphere of the Middle Ages gave way to the social upheavals of the Reformation and the Renaissance. A single technological innovation had contributed to the total reshaping of the continent.

This conclusion is taken from a literary analysis essay about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . It summarizes what the essay’s analysis achieved and emphasizes its originality.

By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

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Your essay’s conclusion should contain:

• A rephrased version of your overall thesis
• A brief review of the key points you made in the main body
• An indication of why your argument matters

The conclusion may also reflect on the broader implications of your argument, showing how your ideas could applied to other contexts or debates.

For a stronger conclusion paragraph, avoid including:

• Important evidence or analysis that wasn’t mentioned in the main body
• Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion…”)
• Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g. “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

The conclusion paragraph of an essay is usually shorter than the introduction . As a rule, it shouldn’t take up more than 10–15% of the text.

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How to Conclude a First Class Law Dissertation

• November 9, 2010

How to conclude a first class law dissertation

The conclusion to your dissertation is, arguably, the most important part and is, therefore, potentially a major differentiator between a first class dissertation and a second class one.

There are three things which you should bear in mind:-

1. A well-written dissertation, thesis, essay or, indeed, any story should have three main parts to it: an introduction; a main body; and a conclusion. It reflects any good piece of oratory: say what you’re going to say, say it, then say what you’ve said. In your conclusion, you are, thus, trying to tell the audience what you’ve said throughout your dissertation. If the word limit is 10,000 words, 800-1000 words should, ideally, be used on your conclusion;

2. Don’t be afraid to put your foot into the icy water. As stated in an earlier section you should not be afraid to come to powerful conclusions even if they challenge the views of other academics, practitioners or even the general public, provided that your views can be fairly and reasonably supported. Which brings us to the third and most important aspect of any conclusion;

3. A well drafted conclusion should refer back to your analysis throughout your dissertation to support your suggested conclusions; it should not allow you to raise new arguments or thoughts which you haven’t already considered. Think about it like a civil proof in court: you conduct an examination-in-chief in which you ask open questions to get evidence from your witness; your opponent then cross-examines your witness to test their evidence; you then get a chance to re-examine the witness but you do NOT get a chance to raise anything new that was not covered in cross.

The conclusion to my dissertation, different from my Juridical Review version, is as below. Given the recent Supreme Court criminal law decision of Cadder v HMA, for which see the ScotsLawBlog Cadder article , the final words on getting human rights right attract even greater significance.

6. CONCLUSIONS The right to a fair trial has produced much concern in the conflict of laws arena today, a particular result of the evolution of a more stringent human rights culture in the United Kingdom. In the field of civil jurisdiction, the right to a trial within reasonable time and the right of access to a court, two of the most fundamental substantive rights of Article 6 ECHR, have emerged; in the sphere of recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, the indirect effect doctrine, a key procedural element of the ECHR, which protects the right to a fair trial indirectly but nevertheless just as significantly, has arisen. International private law mechanisms exist for the reconciliation of Article 6 with the sphere of civil jurisdiction and judgments. The extent to which these can be utilised to protect the right to a fair trial is undoubtedly immense. At the most extreme end of protection, Fawcett’s hybrid model could provide great procedural legal certainty, such that human rights concerns will be identified first, using ECtHR jurisprudence, following which international private law mechanisms can resolve these concerns with their inherent flexibility. This strict approach is not unwarranted, particularly where judges fail to see the function or even importance of human rights. Pertinent examples include the misapplication of human rights by the House of Lords in Montgomery , which indeed must be rectified, and other approaches not confined to the courts of the United Kingdom; for instance, the embarrassingly misguided approach of the ECJ in Gasser , where it refused to recognise human rights concerns in its myopic pursuit of the objectives of the Brussels regime, unyielding with respect for concerns of private parties, when there were measures available for reconciliation. This appears even more inadequate in light of Advocate General Léger’s later suggestions that forum non conveniens may actually be incompatible with Article 6, when the doctrine is more than justifiable as it seeks to produce faster and more economic litigation, through both the first and second limbs of Spiliada. Notwithstanding, the need for Fawcett’s model is more questionable in other situations; for instance, in those cases involving potential indirect breaches of Article 6 when transferring actions abroad, flexible international private law mechanisms appear to have been applied in a manner sufficiently compliant with the ECHR, regardless of the characterisation of the breach as one of Article 6 or simply of the demands of justice. For example, the second limb of Spiliada has effectively prevented stays where there is a real risk of a flagrant breach abroad, as is the Soering threshold for such an indirect breach, whether regarding unreasonable delay or lack of access to a court. Fawcett concedes that the overall result of many cases will remain unchanged but suggests that “borderline” cases may exist which pose as pitfalls for the courts. However, the requirement of flagrancy, as he correctly applied at the beginning of his analysis, makes the existence of such cases difficult, if not impossible, to imagine in practice. In this respect, Fawcett appears to be advocating an approach extending beyond avoiding breaching Article 6; instead, he is actively aiming at protection of a fair trial beyond the Article 6 threshold. However, this is not unwelcome; the importance of Article 6 is so great that it is worth adopting the strict approach. The consistent use of ECHR jurisprudence at the outset will, at the very least, prevent a breach of Section 2 of the HRA 1998; further, it may assist those judges who are misguided or fail to see the importance of human rights today. Ultimately, a strict approach may provide for considerable legal certainty in a fast and growing area of law which demands firm, human rights orientated answers.

PS we’ve started to publish guides to some of the best solicitors and legal practices across the UK for certain types of law, including the following:-

• Best Personal Injury Lawyers. See also our  guide here .
• Best Employment Lawyers
• Best Settlement Agreement Lawyers
• Best Commercial Law Firms

If you have any suggestions for law firms or individual solicitors that should be in these lists or extra advice you can provide for these guides (which will, of course, be credited to you), please do get in touch .

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How do you conclude a law essay?

That's the specific view about that area of law, case or piece of legislation which you are trying to prove throughout your essay. The first task in your conclusion is for you to restate your central argument, i.e. to reiterate what was the key opinion you were arguing throughout your essay . It's as simple as that.

How do you write a conclusion for a law essay?

What is a good conclusion for law.

Law Reports Conclusion: this should: Relate back to the findings in the body of the report, Include a clear summary of the main points, Outline the findings of the research . There should be nothing in the conclusion that has not already been mentioned in the body of the report.

How do you structure a law essay?

Structuring your answer Usually, your essay requires an introduction, body paragraphs and a conclusion . Generally, you should have one idea per paragraph. This may mean shorter paragraphs than what you would ordinarily write in high school or other faculties. Concision is key in law.

How to start a conclusion?

The conclusion paragraph should begin by restating your thesis , and then you should broaden back out to a general topic. End with a closing statement.

WRITING A FIRST-CLASS LAW ESSAY - my step by step process

What is an example of a good conclusion?

Here is an example of an effective conclusion paragraph: " Though there has been much debate on the subject, it is clear that democratic leadership is the best form of management for the modern workplace.

What is an example of a concluding sentence?

The following is an example of a concluding statement and final thought: You can gain both muscle and stamina if you follow these simple steps. Although any exercise program takes time, the results are bound to please.

How do you write a law statement?

Include the date of the legal statement; the topic of the statement; the date(s) of the topic to be discussed; the basic facts involved in the reasoning for the statement; the identities of all pertinent parties; their connections to the case; and if possible, the signatures of the parties.

How many paragraphs are in a law essay?

A law essay needs an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Usually, each body paragraph contains one idea .

What essay format is used in law school?

The basic format of a law school personal statement is a double-spaced essay with 1-inch margins . You should use a standard font in size 11 or 12, like Times New Roman, Calibri, Cambria, or Arial. You can also use standard Google fonts with a similar aesthetic, like Roboto.

What should I say in conclusion?

The conclusion paragraph should restate your thesis, summarize the key supporting ideas you discussed throughout the work, and offer your final impression on the central idea . This final summation should also contain the moral of your story or a revelation of a deeper truth.

How do you write a conclusion for law of detachment?

The law of detachment follows the pattern "If P, then Q." If it is known that the hypothesis (if statement, P) is true, then the conclusion (then statement, Q ) must be true.

How do you write the findings of fact and conclusions of law?

If you wrote the findings of fact clearly and concisely , these will be a snap to write. Although you can use more complex sentences in the conclusions than in the findings of fact, keep them brief. Avoid simply quoting statutes, regulations or case law for the conclusions; instead, paraphrase the relevant law.

What is a closing sentence for an essay conclusion?

Conclude with a sentence composed mainly of one-syllable words . Simple language can help create an effect of understated drama. Conclude with a sentence that's compound or parallel in structure; such sentences can establish a sense of balance or order that may feel just right at the end of a complex discussion.

How do you conclude a paragraph without saying in conclusion?

• To summarize.
• Overall, it may be said.
• Taking everything into account.
• On the whole.
• In general, it can be said that.
• With this in mind.
• In the end.
• Considering all this.

What are some things to avoid while writing conclusions?

• Important evidence or analysis that wasn't mentioned in the main body.
• Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion…”)
• Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g. “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Do lawyers write a lot of essays?

In law school, you will be reading and writing a ton . So you can crush all the course work to come. Rather than essays, you'll be primarily writing case briefs/summaries, which break down and analyze a particular legal case.

How long does it take to write a 2000 word law essay?

Writing 2,000 words will take about 50 minutes for the average writer typing on a keyboard and 1.7 hours for handwriting . However, if the content needs to include in-depth research, links, citations, or graphics such as for a blog article or high school essay, the length can grow to 6.7 hours.

How long should a law school essay be?

Tell an interesting, informative story and personal story about yourself in 700-1400 words (double- spaced) . Check the school's requirements for the exact word count or page limit. Share aspects of your life that are not apparent from your transcript(s), resume, or letters of recommendation.

What is a law writing sample?

A writing sample should demonstrate your ability to analyze a legal issue and write clearly, succinctly and concisely . Documents that are suitable: the memo or brief from your first-year Legal Research & Writing class. an excerpt from your law review or journal note.

What is an example of a law rule statement?

For example: “If a witness is able to see all of the accused's facial features clearly for longer than a few seconds, then the witness's testimony is likely accurate, especially when the incident occurs during bright daylight.” This rule statement incorporates all the parts of the standard in just 35 words.

How do you write a good statement of purpose for law school?

Discuss possible personal statement topics with your pre-law advisor (or someone else) before you invest a lot of time writing. Choose a narrow topic. Offer details about a small topic rather than generalities about a broad topic. Focus on a concrete experience and the impact it has had upon you.

How do you write a strong concluding sentence?

• Play the “So What” Game. ...
• Return to the theme or themes in the introduction. ...
• Synthesize, don't summarize. ...
• Include a provocative insight or quotation from the research or reading you did for your paper.

What are the 3 parts of a good conclusion?

An effective conclusion contains three basic parts: a restatement of the speech's thesis; a review of the main points discussed within the speech; and a concluding device that helps create a lasting image in audiences' minds .

How do you write a legal fact summary?

• Tell a story. ...
• Don't be argumentative. ...
• You can – and should – still advocate. ...
• Acknowledge unfavorable facts. ...
• Eliminate irrelevant facts. ...
• Describe the record accurately. ...
• You can include law in the facts if it's appropriate. ...
• It's not just what you say, but how you say it.

So much is at stake in writing a conclusion. This is, after all, your last chance to persuade your readers to your point of view, to impress yourself upon them as a writer and thinker. And the impression you create in your conclusion will shape the impression that stays with your readers after they've finished the essay.

The end of an essay should therefore convey a sense of completeness and closure as well as a sense of the lingering possibilities of the topic, its larger meaning, its implications: the final paragraph should close the discussion without closing it off.

To establish a sense of closure, you might do one or more of the following:

• Conclude by linking the last paragraph to the first, perhaps by reiterating a word or phrase you used at the beginning.
• Conclude with a sentence composed mainly of one-syllable words. Simple language can help create an effect of understated drama.
• Conclude with a sentence that's compound or parallel in structure; such sentences can establish a sense of balance or order that may feel just right at the end of a complex discussion.

To close the discussion without closing it off, you might do one or more of the following:

• Conclude with a quotation from or reference to a primary or secondary source, one that amplifies your main point or puts it in a different perspective. A quotation from, say, the novel or poem you're writing about can add texture and specificity to your discussion; a critic or scholar can help confirm or complicate your final point. For example, you might conclude an essay on the idea of home in James Joyce's short story collection,  Dubliners , with information about Joyce's own complex feelings towards Dublin, his home. Or you might end with a biographer's statement about Joyce's attitude toward Dublin, which could illuminate his characters' responses to the city. Just be cautious, especially about using secondary material: make sure that you get the last word.
• Conclude by setting your discussion into a different, perhaps larger, context. For example, you might end an essay on nineteenth-century muckraking journalism by linking it to a current news magazine program like  60 Minutes .
• Conclude by redefining one of the key terms of your argument. For example, an essay on Marx's treatment of the conflict between wage labor and capital might begin with Marx's claim that the "capitalist economy is . . . a gigantic enterprise of dehumanization "; the essay might end by suggesting that Marxist analysis is itself dehumanizing because it construes everything in economic -- rather than moral or ethical-- terms.
• Conclude by considering the implications of your argument (or analysis or discussion). What does your argument imply, or involve, or suggest? For example, an essay on the novel  Ambiguous Adventure , by the Senegalese writer Cheikh Hamidou Kane, might open with the idea that the protagonist's development suggests Kane's belief in the need to integrate Western materialism and Sufi spirituality in modern Senegal. The conclusion might make the new but related point that the novel on the whole suggests that such an integration is (or isn't) possible.

Finally, some advice on how not to end an essay:

• Don't simply summarize your essay. A brief summary of your argument may be useful, especially if your essay is long--more than ten pages or so. But shorter essays tend not to require a restatement of your main ideas.
• Avoid phrases like "in conclusion," "to conclude," "in summary," and "to sum up." These phrases can be useful--even welcome--in oral presentations. But readers can see, by the tell-tale compression of the pages, when an essay is about to end. You'll irritate your audience if you belabor the obvious.
• Resist the urge to apologize. If you've immersed yourself in your subject, you now know a good deal more about it than you can possibly include in a five- or ten- or 20-page essay. As a result, by the time you've finished writing, you may be having some doubts about what you've produced. (And if you haven't immersed yourself in your subject, you may be feeling even more doubtful about your essay as you approach the conclusion.) Repress those doubts. Don't undercut your authority by saying things like, "this is just one approach to the subject; there may be other, better approaches. . ."

Copyright 1998, Pat Bellanca, for the Writing Center at Harvard University

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The ‘Colorblindness’ Trap

How a civil rights ideal got hijacked.

Supported by

The ‘Colorblindness’ Trap: How a Civil Rights Ideal Got Hijacked

The fall of affirmative action is part of a 50-year campaign to roll back racial progress.

By Nikole Hannah-Jones

Nikole Hannah-Jones is a staff writer at the magazine and is the creator of The 1619 Project. She also teaches race and journalism at Howard University.

Anthony K. Wutoh, the provost of Howard University, was sitting at his desk last July when his phone rang. It was the new dean of the College of Medicine, and she was worried. She had received a letter from a conservative law group called the Liberty Justice Center. The letter warned that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions, the school “must cease” any practices or policies that included a “racial component” and said it was notifying medical schools across the country that they must eliminate “racial discrimination” in their admissions. If Howard refused to comply, the letter threatened, the organization would sue.

Listen to this article, read by Janina Edwards

Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.

Wutoh told the dean to send him the letter and not to respond until she heard back from him. Hanging up, he sat there for a moment, still. Then he picked up the phone and called the university’s counsel: This could be a problem.

Like most university officials, Wutoh was not shocked in June when the most conservative Supreme Court in nearly a century cut affirmative action’s final thin thread. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the court invalidated race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Universities across the nation had been preparing for the ruling, trying both to assess potential liabilities and determine the best response.

But Howard is no ordinary university. Chartered by the federal government two years after the Civil War, Howard is one of about 100 historically Black colleges and universities, known as H.B.C.U.s. H.B.C.U. is an official government designation for institutions of higher learning founded from the time of slavery through the end of legal apartheid in the 1960s, mostly in the South. H.B.C.U.s were charged with educating the formerly enslaved and their descendants, who for most of this nation’s history were excluded from nearly all of its public and private colleges.

Though Howard has been open to students of all races since its founding in 1867, nearly all of its students have been Black. And so after the affirmative-action ruling, while elite, predominantly white universities fretted about how to keep their Black enrollments from shrinking, Howard (where I am a professor) and other H.B.C.U.s were planning for a potential influx of students who either could no longer get into these mostly white colleges or no longer wanted to try.

Wutoh thought it astounding that Howard — a university whose official government designation and mandate, whose entire reason for existing, is to serve a people who had been systematically excluded from higher education — could be threatened with a lawsuit if it did not ignore race when admitting students. “The fact that we have to even think about and consider what does this mean and how do we continue to fulfill our mission and fulfill the reason why we were founded as an institution and still be consistent with the ruling — I have to acknowledge that we have struggled with this,” he told me. “My broader concern is this is a concerted effort, part of an orchestrated plan to roll back many of the advances of the ’50s and ’60s. I am alarmed. It is absolutely regressive.”

Wutoh has reason to be alarmed. Conservative groups have spent the nine months since the affirmative-action ruling launching an assault on programs designed to explicitly address racial inequality across American life. They have filed a flurry of legal challenges and threatened lawsuits against race-conscious programs outside the realm of education, including diversity fellowships at law firms, a federal program to aid disadvantaged small businesses and a program to keep Black women from dying in childbirth. These conservative groups — whose names often evoke fairness and freedom and rights — are using civil rights law to claim that the Constitution requires “colorblindness” and that efforts targeted at ameliorating the suffering of descendants of slavery illegally discriminate against white people. They have co-opted both the rhetoric of colorblindness and the legal legacy of Black activism not to advance racial progress, but to stall it. Or worse, reverse it.

During the civil rights era, this country passed a series of hard-fought laws to dismantle the system of racial apartheid and to create policies and programs aimed at repairing its harms. Today this is often celebrated as the period when the nation finally triumphed over its original sin of slavery. But what this narrative obscures is that the gains of the civil rights movement were immediately met with a backlash that sought to subvert first the language and then the aims of the movement. Over the last 50 years, we have experienced a slow-moving, near-complete unwinding of the idea that this country owes anything to Black Americans for 350 years of legalized slavery and racism. But we have also undergone something far more dangerous: the dismantling of the constitutional tools for undoing racial caste in the United States.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Supreme Court began to vacillate on remedies for descendants of slavery. And for the last 30 years, the court has almost exclusively ruled in favor of white people in so-called reverse-discrimination cases while severely narrowing the possibility for racial redress for Black Americans. Often, in these decisions, the court has used colorblindness as a rationale that dismisses both the particular history of racial disadvantage and its continuing disparities.

This thinking has reached its legal apotheosis on the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Starting with the 2007 case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the court found that it wasn’t the segregation of Black and Latino children that was constitutionally repugnant, but the voluntary integration plans that used race to try to remedy it. Six years later, Roberts wrote the majority opinion in Shelby v. Holder, gutting the Voting Rights Act, which had ensured that jurisdictions could no longer prevent Black Americans from voting because of their race. The act was considered one of the most successful civil rights laws in American history, but Roberts declared that its key provision was no longer needed, saying that “things have changed dramatically.” But a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that since the ruling, jurisdictions that were once covered by the Voting Rights Act because of their history of discrimination saw the gap in turnout between Black and white voters grow nearly twice as quickly as in other jurisdictions with similar socioeconomic profiles.

These decisions of the Roberts court laid the legal and philosophical groundwork for the recent affirmative-action case. Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard involved two of the country’s oldest public and private universities, both of which were financed to a significant degree with the labor of the enslaved and excluded slavery’s descendants for most of their histories. In finding that affirmative action was unconstitutional, Roberts used the reasoning of Brown v. Board of Education to make the case that because “the Constitution is colorblind” and “should not permit any distinctions of law based on race or color,” race cannot be used even to help a marginalized group. Quoting the Brown ruling, Roberts argued that “the mere act of ‘separating children’” because of their race generated “ ‘a feeling of inferiority’” among students.

But in citing Brown, Roberts spoke generically of race, rarely mentioning Black people and ignoring the fact that this earlier ruling struck down segregation because race had been used to subordinate them. When Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote those words in 1954, he was not arguing that the use of race harmed Black and white children equally. The use of race in assigning students to schools, Warren wrote, referring to an earlier lower-court decision, had “a detrimental effect upon colored children” specifically, because it was “interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group.”

Roberts quickly recited in just a few paragraphs the centuries-long legacy of legal discrimination against Black Americans. Then, as if flicking so many crumbs from the table, he used the circular logic of conservative colorblindness to dispatch that past with a pithy line: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

By erasing the context, Roberts turned colorblindness on its head, reinterpreting a concept meant to eradicate racial caste to one that works against racial justice.

Roberts did not invent this subversion of colorblindness, but his court is constitutionalizing it. While we seem to understand now how the long game of the anti-abortion movement resulted in a historically conservative Supreme Court that last year struck down Roe v. Wade, taking away what had been a constitutional right, Americans have largely failed to see that a parallel, decades-long antidemocratic racial strategy was occurring at the same time. The ramifications of the recent affirmative-action decision are clear — and they are not something so inconsequential as the complexion of elite colleges and the number of students of color who attend them: We are in the midst of a radical abandonment of a compact that the civil rights movement forged, a shared understanding that racial inequality is harmful to democracy.

The End of Slavery, and the Instant Backlash

When this country finally eliminated first slavery and then racial apartheid, it was left with a fundamental question: How does a white-majority nation, which for nearly its entire history wielded race-conscious policies and laws that oppressed and excluded Black Americans, create a society in which race no longer matters? Do we ignore race in order to eliminate its power, or do we consciously use race to undo its harms?

Our nation has never been able to resolve this tension. Race, we now believe, should not be used to harm or to advantage people, whether they are Black or white. But the belief in colorblindness in a society constructed on the codification of racial difference has always been aspirational. And so achieving it requires what can seem like a paradoxical approach: a demand that our nation pay attention to race in order, at some future point, to attain a just society. As Justice Thurgood Marshall said in a 1987 speech, “The ultimate goal is the creation of a colorblind society,” but “given the position from which America began, we still have a very long way to go.”

Racial progress in the United States has resulted from rare moments of national clarity, often following violent upheavals like the Civil War and the civil rights movement. At those times, enough white people in power embraced the idea that racial subordination is antidemocratic and so the United States must counter its legacy of racial caste not with a mandated racial neutrality or colorblindness but with sweeping race-specific laws and policies to help bring about Black equality. Yet any attempt to manufacture equality by the same means that this society manufactured inequality has faced fierce and powerful resistance.

This resistance began as soon as slavery ended. After generations of chattel slavery, four million human beings were suddenly being emancipated into a society in which they had no recognized rights or citizenship, and no land, money, education, shelter or jobs. To address this crisis, some in Congress saw in the aftermath of this nation’s deadliest war the opportunity — but also the necessity — for a second founding that would eliminate the system of racial slavery that had been its cause. These men, known as Radical Republicans, believed that making Black Americans full citizens required color-consciousness in policy — an intentional reversal of the way race had been used against Black Americans. They wanted to create a new agency called the Freedmen’s Bureau to serve “persons of African descent” or “such persons as once had been slaves” by providing educational, food and legal assistance, as well as allotments of land taken from the white-owned properties where formerly enslaved people were forced to work.

Understanding that “race” was created to force people of African descent into slavery, their arguments in Congress in favor of the Freedmen’s Bureau were not based on Black Americans’ “skin color” but rather on their condition. Standing on the Senate floor in June 1864, Senator Charles Sumner quoted from a congressional commission’s report on the conditions of freed people, saying, “We need a Freedmen’s Bureau not because these people are Negroes but because they are men who have been for generations despoiled of their rights.” Senator Lyman Trumbull, an author of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, declared: “The policy of the states where slavery has existed has been to legislate in its interest. … Now, when slavery no longer exists, the policy of the government must be to legislate in the interest of freedom.” In a speech to Congress, Trumbull compelled “the people of the rebellious states” to be “as zealous and active in the passage of laws and the inauguration of measures to elevate, develop and improve the Negro as they have hitherto been to enslave and degrade him.”

But there were also the first stirrings of an argument we still hear today: that specifically aiding those who, because they were of African descent, had been treated as property for 250 years was giving them preferential treatment. Two Northern congressmen, Martin Kalbfleish, a Dutch immigrant and former Brooklyn mayor, and Anthony L. Knapp, a representative from Illinois, declared that no one would give “serious consideration” to a “bureau of Irishmen’s affairs, a bureau of Dutchmen’s affairs or one for the affairs of those of Caucasian descent generally.” So they questioned why the freedmen should “become these marked objects of special legislation, to the detriment of the unfortunate whites.” Representative Nelson Taylor bemoaned the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866, which he accused of making a “distinction on account of color between two races.” He argued, “This, sir, is what I call class legislation — legislation for a particular class of the Blacks to the exclusion of all whites.”

Ultimately, the Freedmen’s Bureau bills passed, but only after language was added to provide assistance for poor white people as well. Already, at the very moment of racial slavery’s demise, we see the poison pill, the early formulation of the now-familiar arguments that helping a people who had been enslaved was somehow unfair to those who had not, that the same Constitution that permitted and protected bondage based on race now required colorblindness to undo its harms.

This logic helped preserve the status quo and infused the responses to other Reconstruction-era efforts that tried to ensure justice and equality for newly freed people. President Andrew Johnson, in vetoing the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which sought to grant automatic citizenship to four million Black people whose families for generations had been born in the United States, argued that it “proposes a discrimination against large numbers of intelligent, worthy and patriotic foreigners,” who would still be subjected to a naturalization process “in favor of the Negro.” Congress overrode Johnson’s veto, but this idea that unique efforts to address the extraordinary conditions of people who were enslaved or descended from slavery were unfair to another group who had chosen to immigrate to this country foreshadowed the arguments about Asian immigrants and their children that would be echoed 150 years later in Students for Fair Admissions.

As would become the pattern, the collective determination to redress the wrongs of slavery evaporated under opposition. Congress abolished the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1872. And just 12 years after the Civil War, white supremacists and their accommodationists brought Reconstruction to a violent end. The nation’s first experiment with race-based redress and multiracial democracy was over. In its place, the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 ushered in the period of official racial apartheid when it determined that “the enforced separation of the races … neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man … nor denies him the equal protection of the laws.” Over the next six decades, the court condoned an entire code of race law and policies designed to segregate, marginalize, exclude and subjugate descendants of slavery across every realm of American life. The last of these laws would stand until 1968, less than a decade before I was born.

Thurgood Marshall’s Path to Desegregation

In 1930, a young man named Thurgood Marshall, a native son of Baltimore, could not attend the University of Maryland’s law school, located in the city and state where his parents were taxpaying citizens. The 22-year-old should have been a shoo-in for admission. An academically gifted student, Marshall had become enamored with the Constitution after his high school principal punished him for a prank by making him read the founding document. Marshall memorized key parts of the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. After enrolling at Lincoln University, a prestigious Black institution, he joined the debate team and graduated with honors.

But none of that mattered. Only one thing did: Marshall was a descendant of slavery, and Black people, no matter their intellect, ambition or academic record, were barred by law from attending the University of Maryland. Marshall enrolled instead at Howard University Law School, where he studied under the brilliant Charles Hamilton Houston, whose belief that “a lawyer is either a social engineer or he’s a parasite on society” had turned the law school into the “West Point of civil rights.”

It was there that Marshall began to see the Constitution as a living document that must adapt to and address the times. He joined with Houston in crafting the strategy that would dismantle legal apartheid. After graduating as valedictorian, in one of his first cases, Marshall sued the University of Maryland. He argued that the school was violating the 14th Amendment, which granted the formerly enslaved citizenship and ensured Black Americans “equal protection under the law,” by denying Black students admission solely because of their race without providing an alternative law school for Black students. Miraculously, he won.

Nearly two decades later, Marshall stood before the Supreme Court on behalf of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Brown v. Board of Education, arguing that the equal-protection clause enshrined in the 14th Amendment did not abide the use of racial classifications to segregate Black students. Marshall was not merely advancing a generic argument that the Constitution commands blindness to color or race. The essential issue, the reason the 14th Amendment existed, he argued, was not just because race had served as a means of classifying people, but because race had been used to create a system to oppress descendants of slavery — people who had been categorized as Black. Marshall explained that racial classification was being used to enforce an “inherent determination that the people who were formerly in slavery, regardless of anything else, shall be kept as near that stage as is possible.” The court, he said, “should make it clear that that is not what our Constitution stands for.” He sought the elimination of laws requiring segregation, but also the segregation those laws had created.

The Supreme Court, in unanimously striking down school segregation in its Brown decision, did not specifically mention the word “colorblind,” but its ruling echoed the thinking about the 14th Amendment in John Marshall Harlan’s lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. “There is no caste here,” Harlan declared. “Our constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” But he also made it clear that colorblindness was intended to eliminate the subordination of those who had been enslaved, writing, “In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.” He continued, “The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race … is a badge of servitude.”

The court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was not merely a moral statement but a political one. Racial segregation and the violent suppression of democracy among its Black citizens had become a liability for the United States during the Cold War, as the nation sought to stymie Communism’s attraction in non-European nations. Attorney General James P. McGranery submitted a brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Truman administration supporting a ruling against school segregation, writing: “It is in the context of the present world struggle between freedom and tyranny that the problem of racial discrimination must be viewed. The United States is trying to prove to the people of the world of every nationality, race and color that a free democracy is the most civilized and most secure form of government yet devised by man. … Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.”

Civil rights activists were finally seeing their decades-long struggle paying off. But the architects and maintenance crew of racial caste understood a fundamental truth about the society they had built: Systems constructed and enforced over centuries to subjugate enslaved people and their descendants based on race no longer needed race-based laws to sustain them. Racial caste was so entrenched, so intertwined with American institutions, that without race-based counteraction , it would inevitably self-replicate.

One can see this in the effort to desegregate schools after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Across the country, North and South, white officials eliminated laws and policies mandating segregation but also did nothing to integrate schools. They maintained unofficial policies of assigning students to schools based on race, adopting so-called race-neutral admissions requirements designed to eliminate most Black applicants from white schools, and they drew school attendance zones snugly around racially segregated neighborhoods. Nearly a decade after Brown v. Board, educational colorblindness stood as the law of the land, and yet no substantial school integration had occurred. In fact, at the start of 1963, in Alabama and Mississippi, two of the nation’s most heavily Black states, not a single Black child attended school with white children.

By the mid-1960s, the Supreme Court grew weary of the ploys. It began issuing rulings trying to enforce actual desegregation of schools. And in 1968, in Green v. New Kent County, the court unanimously decided against a Virginia school district’s “freedom-of-choice plan” that on its face adhered to the colorblind mandate of Brown but in reality led to almost no integration in the district. “The fact that in 1965 the Board opened the doors of the former ‘white’ school to Negro children and of the ‘Negro’ school to white children merely begins, not ends, our inquiry whether the Board has taken steps adequate to abolish its dual, segregated system,” the court determined.

The court ordered schools to use race to assign students, faculty and staff members to schools to achieve integration. Complying with Brown, the court determined, meant the color-conscious conversion of an apartheid system into one without a “ ‘white’ school and a ‘Negro’ school, but just schools.” In other words, the reality of racial caste could not be constitutionally subordinated to the ideal of colorblindness. Colorblindness was the goal, color-consciousness the remedy.

Using Race to End Racial Inequality

Hobart Taylor Jr., a successful lawyer who lived in Detroit, was mingling at a party in the nation’s capital in January 1961 to celebrate the inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson as vice president of the United States. Taylor had not had any intention of going to the inauguration, but like Johnson, Taylor was a native son of Texas, and his politically active family were early supporters of Johnson. And so at a personal request from the vice president, Taylor reluctantly found himself amid the din of clinking cocktail glasses when Johnson stopped and asked him to come see him in a few days.

Taylor did not immediately go see Johnson. After a second request came in, in February, Taylor found himself in Johnson’s office. The vice president slid into Taylor’s hands a draft of a new executive order to establish the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, which Johnson would lead. This was to be one of President John F. Kennedy’s first steps toward establishing civil rights for Black people.

Taylor’s grandfather had been born into slavery, and yet he and Taylor’s father became highly successful and influential entrepreneurs and landowners despite Texas’ strict color line.

The apartheid society Taylor grew up in was changing, and the vice president of the United States had tapped him to help draft its new rules. How could he say no? Taylor had planned on traveling back to Detroit that night, but instead he checked into the Willard Hotel, where he worked so intently on the draft of the executive order that not only did he forget to eat dinner but also he forgot to tell his wife that he wasn’t coming home. The next day, Taylor worked and reworked the draft for what would become Executive Order 10925, enacted in March 1961.

A few years later, in an interview for the John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program, Taylor would recall what he considered his most significant contribution. The draft he received said employers had to “take action” to ensure that job applicants and employees would not be discriminated against because of their race, creed, color or national origin. Taylor thought the wording needed a propellant, and so inserted the word “affirmative” in front of action. “I was torn between ‘positive’ and ‘affirmative,’ and I decided ‘affirmative’ on the basis of alliteration,” he said. “And that has, apparently, meant a great deal historically in the way in which people have approached this whole thing.”

Taylor added the word to the order, but it would be the other Texan — a man with a fondness for using the N-word in private — who would most forcefully describe the moral rationale, the societal mandate, for affirmative action. Johnson would push through Congress the 1964, 1965 and 1968 civil rights laws — the greatest civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.

But a deeply divided Congress did not pass this legislation simply because it realized a century after the Civil War that descendants of slavery deserved equal rights. Black Americans had been engaged in a struggle to obtain those rights and had endured political assassinations, racist murders, bombings and other violence. Segregated and impoverished Black communities across the nation took part in dozens of rebellions, and tanks rolled through American streets. The violent suppression of the democratic rights of its Black citizens threatened to destabilize the country and had once again become an international liability as the United States waged war in Vietnam.

But as this nation’s racist laws began to fall, conservatives started to realize that the language of colorblindness could be used to their advantage. In the fall of 1964, Barry Goldwater, a Republican who was running against President Johnson, gave his first major national speech on civil rights. Civil rights leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkins had lambasted Goldwater’s presidential nomination, with King saying his philosophy gave “aid and comfort to racists.” But at a carefully chosen venue — the Conrad Hilton in Chicago — in front of a well-heeled white audience unlikely to spout racist rhetoric, Goldwater savvily evoked the rhetoric of the civil rights movement to undermine civil rights. “It has been well said that the Constitution is colorblind,” he said. “And so it is just as wrong to compel children to attend certain schools for the sake of so-called integration as for the sake of segregation. … Our aim, as I understand it, is not to establish a segregated society or an integrated society. It is to preserve a free society.”

The argument laid out in this speech was written with the help of William H. Rehnquist. As a clerk for Justice Robert Jackson during the Brown v. Board of Education case, Rehnquist pushed for the court to uphold segregation. But in the decade that passed, it became less socially acceptable to publicly denounce equal rights for Black Americans, and Rehnquist began to deploy the language of colorblindness in a way that cemented racial disadvantage.

White Americans who liked the idea of equality but did not want descendants of slavery moving next door to them, competing for their jobs or sitting near their children in school were exceptionally primed for this repositioning. As Rick Perlstein wrote in his book “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus,” when it came to race, Goldwater believed that white Americans “didn’t have the words to say the truth they knew in their hearts to be right, in a manner proper to the kind of men they wanted to see when they looked in the mirror. Goldwater was determined to give them the words.”

In the end, Johnson beat Goldwater in a landslide. Then, in June 1965, a few months after Black civil rights marchers were barbarically beaten on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge and two months before he would sign the historic Voting Rights Act into law, Johnson, now president of a deeply and violently polarized nation, gave the commencement address at Howard University. At that moment, Johnson stood at the pinnacle of white American power, and he used his platform to make the case that the country owed descendants of slavery more than just their rights and freedom.

“You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair,” Johnson said. “This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”

For a brief moment, it seemed as if a grander, more just vision of America had taken hold. But while Goldwater did not win the election, 14 years later a case went before the Supreme Court that would signal the ultimate victory of Goldwater’s strategy.

Claiming Reverse Discrimination

Allan Bakke was enjoying a successful career at NASA when he decided he wanted to become a physician. Bakke grew up in a white middle-class family — his father worked for the Post Office, and his mother taught school. Bakke went to the University of Minnesota, where he studied engineering and joined the R.O.T.C. to help pay for college, and then served four years as a Marine, including seven months in Vietnam. It was there that Bakke became enamored with the medical profession. While still working at NASA, he enrolled in night courses to obtain a pre-med degree. In 1972, while he was in his 30s, Bakke applied to 11 medical schools, including at his alma mater, and was rejected by all 11.

One of the schools that Bakke, who was living in California at the time, applied to was the University of California at Davis. The school received 2,664 applications for 100 spots, and by the time he completed his application, most of the seats had already been filled. Some students with lower scores were admitted before he applied, and Bakke protested to the school, claiming that “quotas, open or covert, for racial minorities” had kept him out. His admission file, however, would show that it was his age that was probably a significant strike against him and not his race.

Bakke applied again the next year, and U.C. Davis rejected him again. A friend described Bakke as developing an “almost religious zeal” to fight what he felt was a system that discriminated against white people in favor of so-called minorities. Bakke decided to sue, claiming he had been a victim of “reverse” discrimination.

The year was 1974, less than a decade after Johnson’s speech on affirmative action and a few years after the policy had begun to make its way onto college campuses. The U.C. Davis medical school put its affirmative-action plan in place in 1970. At the time, its first-year medical-school class of 100 students did not include a single Black, Latino or Native student. In response, the faculty designed a special program to boost enrollment of “disadvantaged” students by reserving 16 of the 100 seats for students who would go through a separate admissions process that admitted applicants with lower academic ratings than the general admissions program.

From 1971 to 1974, 21 Black students, 30 Mexican American students and 12 Asian American students enrolled through the special program, while one Black student, six Mexican Americans and 37 Asian American students were admitted through the regular program. Bakke claimed that his right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act had been violated. Though these laws were adopted to protect descendants of slavery from racial discrimination and subordination, Bakke was deploying them to claim that he had been illegally discriminated against because he was white. The case became the first affirmative-action challenge decided by the Supreme Court and revealed just how successful the rhetorical exploitation of colorblindness could be.

Justice Lewis Powell, writing for a fractured court in 1978, determined that although the 14th Amendment was written primarily to bridge “the vast distance between members of the Negro race and the white ‘majority,’” the passage of time and the changing demographics of the nation meant the amendment must now be applied universally. In an argument echoing the debates over the Freedmen’s Bureau, Powell said that the United States had grown more diverse, becoming a “nation of minorities,” where “the white ‘majority’ itself is composed of various minority groups, most of which can lay claim to a history of prior discrimination at the hands of the State and private individuals.”

“The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color,” Powell wrote. “If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.” Powell declared that the medical school could not justify helping certain “perceived” victims if it disadvantaged white people who “bear no responsibility for whatever harm the beneficiaries of the special admissions program are thought to have suffered.”

But who or what, then, did bear the responsibility?

Bakke was raised in Coral Gables, a wealthy, white suburb of Miami whose segregationist founder proposed a plan to remove all Black people from Miami while serving on the Dade County Planning Board, and where the white elementary school did not desegregate until after it was ordered by a federal court to do so in 1970, the same year U.C. Davis began its affirmative-action program. The court did not contemplate how this racially exclusive access to top neighborhoods and top schools probably helped Bakke to achieve the test scores that most Black students, largely relegated because of their racial designation to resource-deprived segregated neighborhoods and educational facilities, did not. It did not mean Bakke didn’t work hard, but it did mean that he had systemic advantages over equally hard-working and talented Black people.

For centuries, men like Powell and Bakke had benefited from a near-100 percent quota system, one that reserved nearly all the seats at this nation’s best-funded public and private schools and most-exclusive public and private colleges, all the homes in the best neighborhoods and all the top, well-paying jobs in private companies and public agencies for white Americans. Men like Bakke did not acknowledge the systemic advantages they had accrued because of their racial category, nor all the ways their race had unfairly benefited them. More critical, neither did the Supreme Court. As members of the majority atop the caste system, racial advantage transmitted invisibly to them. They took notice of their race only when confronted with a new system that sought to redistribute some of that advantage to people who had never had it.

Thus, the first time the court took up the issue of affirmative action, it took away the policy’s power. The court determined that affirmative action could not be used to redress the legacy of racial discrimination that Black Americans experienced, or the current systemic inequality that they were still experiencing. Instead, it allowed that some consideration of a student’s racial background could stand for one reason only: to achieve desired “diversity” of the student body. Powell referred to Harvard’s affirmative-action program, which he said had expanded to include students from other disadvantaged backgrounds, such as those from low-income families. He quoted an example from the plan, which said: “The race of an applicant may tip the balance in his favor, just as geographic origin or a life spent on a farm may tip the balance in other candidates’ cases. A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a Black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer.”

But, of course, a (white) farm boy from Idaho did not descend from people who were enslaved, because they were farmers from Idaho. There were not two centuries of case law arguing over the inherent humanity and rights of farm boys from Idaho. There was no sector of the law, no constitutional provision, that enshrined farm boys from Idaho as property who could be bought and sold. Farm boys from Idaho had no need to engage in a decades-long movement to gain basic rights of citizenship, including the fundamental right to vote. Farm boys from Idaho had not, until just a decade earlier, been denied housing, jobs, the ability to sit on juries and access to the ballot. Farm boys from Idaho had not been forced to sue for the right to attend public schools and universities.

In Bakke, the court was legally — and ideologically — severing the link between race and condition. Race became nothing more than ancestry and a collection of superficial physical traits. The 14th Amendment was no longer about alleviating the extraordinary repercussions of slavery but about treating everyone the same regardless of their “skin color,” history or present condition. With a few strokes of his pen, Powell wiped this context away, and just like that, the experience of 350 years of slavery and Jim Crow was relegated to one thing: another box to check.

Yet at the same time Powell was drafting this ruling, cases of recalcitrant school districts still refusing to integrate Black children were making their way to the Supreme Court. Just 15 years earlier, the federal government called up National Guardsmen to ensure that handfuls of Black students could enroll in white schools.

Indeed, Powell wrote this opinion while sitting on the same court as Thurgood Marshall, who in 1967 became the first Black justice in the Supreme Court’s 178-year history. In Brown, Marshall helped break the back of legalized segregation. Now, as the court deliberated the Bakke case, a frustrated Marshall sent around a two-and-a-half-page typed memo to the other justices. “I repeat, for next to the last time: The decision in this case depends on whether you consider the action of the regents as admitting certain students or as excluding certain other students,” he wrote. “If you view the program as admitting qualified students who, because of this Nation’s sorry history of racial discrimination, have academic records that prevent them from effectively competing for medical school, then this is affirmative action to remove the vestiges of slavery and state imposed segregation by ‘root and branch.’ If you view the program as excluding students, it is a program of ‘quotas’ which violates the principle that the ‘Constitution is color-blind.’”

When Marshall’s arguments did not persuade enough justices, he joined with three others in a dissent from a decision that he saw as actively reversing, and indeed perverting, his legacy. They issued a scathing rebuke to the all-white majority, accusing them of letting “colorblindness become myopia, which masks the reality that many ‘created equal’ have been treated within our lifetimes as inferior both by the law and by their fellow citizens.”

Marshall also wrote his own dissent, where he ticked off statistic after statistic that revealed the glaring disparities between descendants of slavery and white Americans in areas like infant and maternal mortality, unemployment, income and life expectancy. He argued that while collegiate diversity was indeed a compelling state interest, bringing Black Americans into the mainstream of American life was much more urgent, and that failing to do so would ensure that “America will forever remain a divided society.”

Marshall called out the court’s hypocrisy. “For it must be remembered that, during most of the past 200 years, the Constitution, as interpreted by this court, did not prohibit the most ingenious and pervasive forms of discrimination against the Negro,” he wrote. “Now, when a state acts to remedy the effects of that legacy of discrimination, I cannot believe that this same Constitution stands as a barrier.”

At the end of his lengthy dissent, Marshall pointed out what had become the court’s historic pattern. “After the Civil War, our government started ‘affirmative action’ programs. This court … destroyed the movement toward complete equality,” he wrote. As he said, “I fear that we have come full circle.”

The Reagan Rollback

In 1980, having just secured the Republican nomination for the presidency, Ronald Reagan traveled to Mississippi’s Neshoba County Fair to give an address. It was there in that county, a mere 16 years earlier, that three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by Klansmen, among the most notorious killings of the civil rights era.

Standing in front of a roaring crowd of about 10,000 white Mississippians, Reagan began his general-election campaign. He did not mention race. He did not need to. Instead he spoke of states’ rights, replicating the language of Confederates and segregationists, to signal his vision for America.

Despite the Bakke ruling, affirmative action continued to gain ground in the 1970s, with a deeply divided Supreme Court upholding limited affirmative action in hiring and other areas, and the Jimmy Carter administration embracing race-conscious policies. But Reagan understood the political power of white resistance to these policies, which if allowed to continue and succeed would redistribute opportunity in America.

Once in office, Reagan aggressively advanced the idea that racial-justice efforts had run amok, that Black Americans were getting undeserved racial advantages across society and that white Americans constituted the primary victims of discrimination.

A 1985 New York Times article noted that the Reagan administration was “intensifying its legal attack on affirmative action” across American life, saying the administration “has altered the government’s definition of racial discrimination.” As early as the 1970s, Reagan began using the phrase “reverse discrimination” — what the political scientist Philip L. Fetzer called a “covert political term” that undermined racial redress programs by redefining them as anti-white. Reagan’s administration claimed that race-conscious remedies were illegal and that hiring goals for Black Americans were “a form of racism” and as abhorrent as the “separate but equal” doctrine struck down by Brown v. Board.

Reagan, who had secretly called Black people monkeys and opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, opposed the establishment of the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday. Yet in the first commemoration of that holiday in 1986, he trotted out King’s words to condemn racial-justice policy. “We’re committed to a society in which all men and women have equal opportunities to succeed, and so we oppose the use of quotas,” he said. “We want a colorblind society, a society that, in the words of Dr. King, judges people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

This passage from King’s famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech has become a go-to for conservatives seeking to discredit efforts to address the pervasive disadvantages that Black Americans face. And it works so effectively because few Americans have read the entire speech, and even fewer have read any of the other speeches or writings in which King explicitly makes clear that colorblindness was a goal that could be reached only through race-conscious policy. Four years after giving his “Dream” speech, King wrote, “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him.” And during a 1968 sermon given less than a week before his assassination, King said that those who opposed programs to specifically help Black Americans overcome their disadvantage “never stop to realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. The people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made the Black man’s color a stigma; but beyond this they never stop to realize that they owe a people who were kept in slavery 244 years.”

But as the sociologist Stuart Hall once wrote, “Those who produce the discourse also have the power to make it true.” Reagan deftly provided the road map to the nation’s racial future. Tapping into white aversion to acknowledging and addressing the singular crimes committed against Black Americans, conservatives, who had not long before championed and defended racial segregation, now commandeered the language of colorblindness, which had been used to dismantle the impacts of legal apartheid. They wrapped themselves in the banner of rhetorical equality while condemning racial-justice activists as the primary perpetrators of racism.

“There’s this really concerted, strategic effort to communicate to white people that racial justice makes white people victims, and that when people demand racial justice, they don’t actually mean justice; they mean revenge,” Ian Haney López, a race and constitutional law scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, told me. “Black people are treated as if they are just any other Americans. There is no history of racial subordination associated with Black people. There is no structural or systemic racism against African Americans. By 1989, it’s over. Reactionary colorblindness has won.”

Diversity vs. Redress

Perhaps no single person has more successfully wielded Reagan’s strategy than Edward Blum. In 1992, Blum, who made his living as a stockbroker, decided to run for Congress as a Republican in a Texas district carved out to ensure Black representation. Blum was trounced by the Black Democratic candidate. He and several others sued, arguing that a consideration of racial makeup when creating legislative districts violated the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause. Despite the fact that until a 1944 Supreme Court ruling, Texas had selected candidates through all-white primaries, and the fact that the district had been created in part in response to the state’s history of Black-voter suppression, Blum’s side won the case, forcing a redrawing of legislative districts in a manner that diluted Black and Latino voting power. Since that victory, Blum has mounted a decades-long campaign that has undermined the use of race to achieve racial justice across American life.

Blum is not a lawyer, but his organizations, funded by a mostly anonymous cadre of deep-pocketed conservatives, have been wildly effective. It is Blum, for instance, who was the strategist behind the case against the Voting Rights Act. When the Supreme Court again narrowly upheld affirmative action in college admissions in the early 2000s, Blum set his sights on killing it altogether. In that 2003 case, Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the majority opinion preserving limited affirmative action but putting universities on notice by setting an arbitrary timeline for when the court should determine that enough racial justice will have been achieved. “It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student-body diversity in the context of public higher education,” O’Connor wrote. “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.” The use of the term “racial preferences” is key here. Instead of a policy created to even the playing field for a people who had been systematically held back and still faced pervasive discrimination, affirmative action was cast as a program that punished white Americans by giving unfair preferential treatment to Black Americans.

Blum didn’t wait 25 years to challenge affirmative action. His case brought on behalf of Abigail Fisher, a soft-spoken white woman who sued the University of Texas at Austin, after she was denied admission, went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court ultimately upheld the university’s admissions program. In his second attempt, Blum changed tactics. As he told a gathering of the Houston Chinese Alliance in 2015: “I needed Asian plaintiffs.” In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Blum’s group argued, and the court agreed, that affirmative-action programs discriminated against Asian Americans and, at the University of North Carolina, also white students. But many saw Blum’s use of another historically marginalized group in the lawsuit as an attempt to neutralize any argument that those targeting affirmative action opposed racial equality.

Blum’s success relied on defining affirmative action as a program about “visual diversity,” treating race as a mere collection of physical traits and not a social construct used to subordinate and stigmatize. When colleges seek diversity, he said, they are “really talking about skin-color diversity. How somebody looks. What’s your skin color? What’s the shape of your eyes? What’s the texture of your hair? Most Americans don’t think that the shape of your eyes tells us much about who you are as an individual. What does your skin color tell the world about who you are as an individual?” This reasoning resounds for many Americans who have also come to think about race simply as what you see.

Blum has described racial injustice against Black Americans as a thing of the past — a “terrible scar” on our history. As he awaited the court’s ruling last April, Blum told The Christian Science Monitor that today’s efforts to address that past were discriminatory and in direct conflict with the colorblind goals of Black activism. He said that “an individual’s race or ethnicity should not be used to help that individual or harm that individual in their life’s endeavors” and that affirmative action was “in grave tension with the founding principles of our civil rights movement.” But the civil rights movement has never been about merely eliminating race or racism; it’s also about curing its harms, and civil rights groups oppose Blum’s efforts.

Yet progressives, too, have unwittingly helped to maintain the corrupt colorblind argument that Blum has employed so powerfully, in part because the meaning of affirmative action was warped nearly from its beginning by the Supreme Court’s legal reasoning in Bakke. When the court determined that affirmative-action programs could stand only for “diversity” and not for redress, many advocates and institutions, in order to preserve these programs, embraced the idea that the goal of affirmative action was diversity and inclusiveness and not racial justice. Progressive organizations adopted the lexicon of “people of color” when discussing affirmative-action programs and also flattened all African-descended people into a single category, regardless of their particular lineage or experience in the United States.

Campuses certainly became more “diverse” as admissions offices focused broadly on recruiting students who were not white. But the descendants of slavery, for whom affirmative action originated, remain underrepresented among college students, especially at selective colleges and universities. At elite universities, research shows, the Black population consists disproportionately of immigrants and children of immigrants rather than students whose ancestors were enslaved here.

So, at least on this one thing, Blum is right. Many institutions have treated affirmative-action programs as a means of achieving visual diversity. Doing so has weakened the most forceful arguments for affirmative action, which in turn has weakened public support for such policies. Institutions must find ways, in the wake of the affirmative-action ruling, to address the racism that Black people face no matter their lineage. But using affirmative action as a diversity program — or a program to alleviate disadvantage that any nonwhite person faces — has in actuality played a part in excluding the very people for whom affirmative action and other racial redress programs were created to help.

Taking Back the Intent of Affirmative Action

Just as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund used the Brown v. Board of Education ruling as a legal catalyst for eliminating apartheid in all American life, Blum and those of like mind intend to use the affirmative-action ruling to push a sweeping regression in the opposite direction: bringing down this nation’s racial-justice programs and initiatives.

Right after the June ruling, 13 Republican state attorneys general sent letters to 100 of the nation’s biggest companies warning that the affirmative-action ruling prohibits what they call “discriminating on the basis of race, whether under the label of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ or otherwise. Treating people differently because of the color of their skin, even for benign purposes, is unlawful and wrong.” Companies that engage in such racial discrimination, the letter threatened, would “face serious legal consequences.”

The letter points to racial-justice and diversity-and-inclusion programs created or announced by companies, particularly after the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer. In response to the killing, a multigenerational protest movement arose and faced violent suppression by law enforcement as it sought to force this nation to see that the descendants of slavery were still suffering and deserved repair. Corporations took a public stance on racial justice, vowing to integrate everything from their boardrooms to their suppliers. Monuments to white supremacists and Confederates that had stood for 100 years were finally vanquished from the public square. And many colleges and other institutions vocally committed to racial justice as an ethos.

But that fragile multiracial coalition — which for a period understood racial redress as a national good needed to secure and preserve our democracy — has been crushed by the same forces that have used racial polarization to crush these alliances in the past. Conservatives have spent the four years since George Floyd’s murder waging a so-called war against “woke” — banning books and curriculums about racism, writing laws that eliminate diversity-and-inclusion programs and prohibiting the teaching of courses even at the college level that are deemed racially “divisive.”

In other words, conservatives have used state power to prepare a citizenry to accept this new American legal order by restricting our ability to understand why so much racial inequality exists, particularly among the descendants of slavery, and why programs like affirmative action were ever needed in the first place.

“Something really stunning and dangerous that has happened during the Trump era is that the right uses the language of colorblindness or anti-wokeness to condemn any references to racial justice,” Haney López told me. “This rhetoric is a massive fraud, because it claims colorblindness toward race but is actually designed to stimulate hyper-race-consciousness among white people. That strategy has worked.”

Today we have a society where constitutional colorblindness dictates that school segregation is unconstitutional, yet most Black students have never attended a majority-white school or had access to the same educational resources as white children. A society with a law prohibiting discrimination in housing and lending, and yet descendants of slavery remain the most residentially, educationally and economically segregated people in the country. A society where employment discrimination is illegal, and yet Black Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed as white Americans, even when they hold college degrees.

Despite these realities, conservative groups are initiating a wave of attacks on racial-equality programs. About 5 percent of practicing attorneys are Black, and yet one of Blum’s groups, the American Alliance for Equal Rights, sued law firms to stop their diversity fellowships. In August, it also sued the Fearless Fund, a venture-capital firm founded by two Black women, which through its charitable arm helps other Black women gain access to funding by giving small grants to businesses that are at least 51 percent owned by Black women. Even though according to the World Economic Forum, Black women receive just 0.34 percent of venture-capital funds in the United States, Blum declared the fund to be racially discriminatory. Another Blum group, Students for Fair Admissions, has now sued the U.S. Military Academy, even though the Supreme Court allowed race-conscious admissions to stand in the military. Another organization, the Center for Individual Rights, has successfully overturned a decades-long Small Business Administration policy that automatically treated so-called minority-owned businesses as eligible for federal contracts for disadvantaged businesses.

Last year, a group called the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation sued the City and County of San Francisco over their funding of several programs aimed at eliminating disparities Black Americans face, including the Abundant Birth Project, which gives stipends for prenatal care, among other supports, to Black women and Pacific Islanders to help prevent them from dying during childbirth. Even though maternal mortality for Black women in the United States is up to four times as high as it is for white women, conservatives argue that programs specifically helping the women most likely to die violate the 14th Amendment. Even as this lawsuit makes its way through the courts, there are signs of why these sorts of programs remain necessary: It was announced last year that the Department of Health and Human Services opened a civil rights investigation into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for allegations of racism against Black mothers following the death of a Black woman who went there to give birth.

It is impossible to look at the realities of Black life that these programs seek to address and come to the conclusion that the lawsuits are trying to make society more fair or just or free. Instead they are foreclosing the very initiatives that could actually make it so.

And nothing illuminates that more than the conservative law group’s letter warning Howard — an institution so vaunted among Black Americans that it’s known as the Mecca — that its medical school must stop any admissions practices that have a “racial component.” Howard’s medical school, founded in 1868, remains one of just four historically Black medical schools in the United States. Howard received nearly 9,000 medical-school applicants for 130 open seats in 2023. And while almost all of the students who apply to be Howard undergraduates are Black, because there are so few medical-school slots available, most applicants to Howard’s medical school are not. Since the school was founded to serve descendants of slavery with a mission to educate “disadvantaged students for careers in medicine,” however, most of the students admitted each year are Black.

That has now made it a target, even though Black Americans account for only 5 percent of all U.S. doctors, an increase of just three percentage points in the 46 years since Thurgood Marshall’s dissent in Bakke. Despite affirmative action at predominantly white schools, at least 70 percent of the Black doctors and dentists in America attended an H.B.C.U. H.B.C.U.s also have produced half of the Black lawyers, 40 percent of Black engineers and a quarter of Black graduates in STEM fields.

Even Plessy v. Ferguson, considered perhaps the worst Supreme Court ruling in U.S. history, sanctioned the existence of H.B.C.U.s and other Black-serving organizations. If institutions like Howard or the Fearless Fund cannot work to explicitly assist the descendants of slavery, who still today remain at the bottom of nearly every indicator of success and well-being, then we have decided as a nation that there is nothing we should do to help Black Americans achieve equality and that we will remain a caste society.

What we are witnessing, once again, is the alignment of white power against racial justice and redress. As history has shown, maintaining racial inequality requires constant repression and is therefore antithetical to democracy. And so we must be clear about the stakes: Our nation teeters at the brink of a particularly dangerous moment, not just for Black Americans but for democracy itself.

To meet the moment, our society must forcefully recommit to racial justice by taking lessons from the past. We must reclaim the original intent of affirmative-action programs stretching all the way back to the end of slavery, when the Freedmen’s Bureau focused not on race but on status, on alleviating the conditions of those who had endured slavery. Diversity matters in a diverse society, and American democracy by definition must push for the inclusion of all marginalized people. But remedies for injustice also need to be specific to the harm.

So we, too, must shift our language and, in light of the latest affirmative-action ruling, focus on the specific redress for descendants of slavery . If Yale, for instance, can apologize for its participation in slavery, as it did last month, then why can’t it create special admissions programs for slavery’s descendants — a program based on lineage and not race — just as it does for its legacy students? Corporations, government programs and other organizations could try the same.

Those who believe in American democracy, who want equality, must no longer allow those who have undermined the idea of colorblindness to define the terms. Working toward racial justice is not just the moral thing to do, but it may also be the only means of preserving our democracy.

Race-based affirmative action has died. The fight for racial justice need not. It cannot.

Top photo illustration by Mark Harris. Photograph by Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

A picture with an earlier version of this article was published in error. The image caption, relying on erroneous information from a photo agency, misidentified the man shown as Hobart Taylor Jr. The image has been replaced with a photo of Taylor.

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Nikole Hannah-Jones is a domestic correspondent for The New York Times Magazine focusing on racial injustice. Her extensive reporting in both print and radio has earned a Pulitzer Prize, National Magazine Award, Peabody and a Polk Award. More about Nikole Hannah-Jones

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