[EL] "The Chief Justice's Long Game"

[Rick Hasen]

    "The Chief Justice's Long Game" <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=52150>

Posted on June 25, 2013 7:20 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=52150> by 
Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

The /New York Times/ has posted my oped 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/opinion/the-chief-justices-long-game.html?ref=opinion&_r=0> 
(for Wednesday's newspaper) on the Shelby County decision. It begins:

    IN an opinion brimming with a self-confidence that he hides behind a
    cloak of judicial minimalism, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.,
    writing for a conservative Supreme Court majority in Shelby County
    v. Holder
    <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-96_6k47.pdf>,
    cripples Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

    The court pretends it is not striking down the act but merely
    sending the law back to Congress for tweaking; it imagines that
    Congress forced its hand; and it fantasizes that voting
    discrimination in the South is a thing of the past. None of this is
    true.

    In the Shelby decision, we see a somewhat more open version of a
    pattern that is characteristic of the Roberts court, in which the
    conservative justices tee up major constitutional issues for
    dramatic reversal. First the court wrecked campaign finance law in
    Citizens United.
    <http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html> On Tuesday it
    took away a crown jewel of the civil rights movement. And as we saw
    <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/us/affirmative-action-decision.html?ref=adamliptak>
    in Monday's Fisher case,
    <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-345_l5gm.pdf>
    affirmative action is next in line, even if the court wants to wait
    another year or two to pull the trigger. Imagine striking down
    affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act in the same week!

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-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org

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