201 STRONG AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PROGRAMS AND DISPROPORTIONATE BURDENS The Journal of Value Inquiry 33: 201–209, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Strong Affirmative Action Programs and Disproportionate Burdens S. KERSHNAR 4521 Claire Avenue, Apt. 6, Lincoln, NE 68516, U.S.A. 1. The Compensatory Justice Justification of Strong Affirmative Action Programs A strong affirmative action program is a program that involves giving preference to minority and women candidates who are less qualified than others, usually with regard to a job, educational opportunity, or some other benefit. Among the most widely cited moral justifications for strong affirmative action, are the values of compensatory or corrective justice, and the value of diversity. Diversity and compensatory justice are not the only moral reasons that might be claimed to support strong affirmative action. Strong affirmative action might also be justified by desert, consequentialism, or virtue. In the context of state educational institutions, the compensatory justice justification does not succeed in establishing that such programs distribute the burdens of compensation in a proportionate manner. Compensatory justice aims at eliminating or rectifying unjustifiable gains and losses. The usual concern of compensation is the nullification of a victim’s losses and the reordering of her affairs to make her whole again. 1 It generally relies on a comparison of the actual world in which the injured party lives, to a relevantly similar possible world in which the party lives but where the unjust injuring act never occurred. Just compensation places the person in qualitatively the same position she would have been had she lived in the possible world. The compensatory justice justification of affirmative action requires the considerations of two central questions: What compensation is owed to the injured party? Who owes the injured party compensation? The compensatory justice justification of strong affirmative action is a type of backward-looking justification of strong affirmative action programs. Desert-based justifications of such programs are also backward-looking, but are distinguishable from compensatory justice justifications in that they require the relevant act or feature warranting the benefit to be under the agent’s control. 2