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Minority advocacy groups play a role in defining, re-defining, and pursuing interests and
policies. As part of that role, groups seek to influence various aspects and stages of the policy
process, including introduction and formulation of legislation as well as the outcomes of court
decisions. Primary activities in this regard are congressional testimony and the filing of amicus
curiae (friend of the court) briefs. To be sure, groups are involved in numerous other activities
but the two identified are important with respect to the particular questions of interest in this
paper and the broader body of race/ethnicity research. Despite an upsurge in relevant political
science research, many issues concerning Latino politics and minority groups generally remain
understudied, including the nature and extent of “advocacy” and/or interest groups’ activities.
This and related research are part of a broader set of theoretical concerns that revolve around
“the politics of democratic inclusion.”
The focus of this paper is on policy salience and policy positions of groups as evidenced
in congressional testimony, and as expressed in the legal arena in “friends of the court” briefs.
For both dimensions of the research, we center on the activities of a set of groups representative
of Latino/Hispanic, Black/African American, and general civil rights groups. Indeed, we think
the nature and the breadth of depth of policy concerns – such as liberal, civil rights, race, multi-
cultural, etc., -- has obvious and important implications for group relations, as developed below.
The groups include the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), League of United Latin American
Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), NAACP, National
Urban League, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).
The analysis of congressional testimony has two dimensions: (a) policy concerns/saliency
and to a lesser extent, (b) activity congruence, related to minority/civil rights advocacy groups.
The former category has received little scholarly attention while the latter has received a modest
Convention