Affirmative action has been and continues to be a volatile, complex, and hotly debated issue. In this volume, Ronald Turner provides a comprehensive resource and guide through the maze of preferential treatment doctrine, U.S. Supreme Court decisions relating to affirmative action, and agency regulations and practices. Rather than focus on the moral or constitutional issues involved, Turner seeks to provide an objective analysis of the evolution of the legal concept of affirmative action--to describe what the law has actually meant in practice rather than judge whether affirmative action is...