[EL] David Cole on SCOTUS and Voting rights

[Doug Hess]

I know the Election Law blog posted a link to David Cole's essay at the NY
Review of Books, but it's behind a subscriber wall and I thought some might
like to see this excellent summary at the conclusion of the article. You
can get a one week pass for $4.99 to the Review (covers all content for one
week, I believe). Link is below the text.

 " Before Congress reenacted Section 5 in 2006, it held twenty-one separate
hearings, compiling a record of over 15,000 pages. On that basis, it
concluded that Section 5’s preclearance obligations will remain necessary
...

That judgment reflected a comprehensive review of facts and actual
practices that went far beyond the capacity of a Court hearing a single
case. According to Supreme Court precedent, because the Constitution gives
Congress coequal enforcement authority, Congress’s judgment deserves
deference unless it is irrational. But in this matter Congress’s judgment
is unfortunately exceedingly well founded. We have not achieved color
blindness, and pretending that we have done so will only undermine minority
rights. ...

...The Fifteenth Amendment authorizes Congress, not the Court, to enact
“appropriate legislation,” and for over fifty years, Section 5 has been
deemed appropriate to address the continuing legacy of voting
discrimination. At oral argument, the conservative justices seemed ready to
jettison that tradition, on the basis of personal commitments not found in
precedent or the Constitution’s commands. We can only hope that when it
comes to writing the decision, they will resist the temptation, as Justice
Scalia put it, to “impose [their] own favored social and economic
dispositions nationwide.” "


http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/04/roberts-court-vs-voting-rights/?pagination=false

Douglas R. Hess, PhD
Washington, DC
ph. 202-277-6400
douglasrhess at gmail.com

Starting Aug. 2013:

Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Grinnell College
1210 Park Street
Grinnell, IA 50112-1670
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