"Lani Guinier {April 19, 1950}

Is an American lawyer,scholar and civil rights activists.The first African-American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law School,her work includes professional responsibilities of public lawyers,the relationship between democracy and the law,the role of race and gender in the political process,equality in college admissions,and affirmative action.Born in New York City,she is the daughter of a Jewish mother,Eugenia Paprin,and the Jamaican-born scholar Ewart Guinier,who also served as Harvard professor (chair) of the Afro-American Studies Department in 1969.Lani has said that she wanted to be a lawyer since she was twelve.After graduating from Radcliffe University in 1971 and Yale Law School in 1974,she clerked for Judge Damon Keith then served as special assistant to then Assistant Attorney General Drew S. Days in the Civil Rights Division in the Carter Administration.In 1981,after Ronald Reagan took office,she joined the NAACP legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) as an assistant counsel,eventually becoming head of its Voting Rights Project.She is probably most well known as President Bill Clinton nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in April 1993.A combination of political factors led to her nomination being withdrawn in June 1993.Lani was attacked by Clint Bolick of the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page as one of b"Clinton's Quota Queens."(The title,some said reminiscent of the denigrating term "welfare queen"was chosen not author Clint but by editors at the Wall Street Journal.) Others described her views as "anti-constitutional"because of her views on using proportional representation in local elections.In addition,Democratic Senators such as David Pryor of Arkansas and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts informed President Clinton that her interviews with Senators were going poorly and urged him to withdraw the nomination.According to Clinton's autobiography,Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois,the only African-American who was serving in the upper chamber at that time also urged the President to withdraw Lani nomination.President Clinton took the advice of these elected officials and withdrew her nomination,claiming he was unfamiliar with her writing and that he didn't realize that she advocated pure quotas as opposed to affirmative action,as opponents had charged.The charges was false;Lani had many times explicitly rejected the use of racial quotas in her law review articles.Her theories were first presented in law-school publications.They were also aired in part with her 1994 publication,The Tyranny of the Majority.In this work and others,Lani suggests various ideas to strengthen minority groups'voting power,and rectify what is,according to her,an unfair voting system.She claims she is referring not only to racial minorities,but any numerical group,such as fundamentalist Christians,the Amish,or in states such as Alabama,Republicans;she also states that she does not advocate any single procedural rule,but rather that all alternatives be considered in the context of litigation "after the court finds a legal violation.Some of the ideas she considers are:Cumulative voting, a system in which each voter has "the same number of votes as there are seats or options to vote for,and they can then distribute their votes in any combinations to reflect their preferences"--a system often used on corporate boards in 30 states,as well as by school boards and county commissions.Multi-member "superdistricts"is another strategy which "modifies winner-take-all majority rule to require that something more than a bare majority of voters must approve or concur before action is taken."Since 2001,she has been active in civil rights in higher education,coining the term "confirmative action"The process of confirmative action,she says,"ties diversity to the admissions criteria for all students,whatever their race,gender,or ethnic background-including people of color,working class whites,and even children of privilege.