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The Voting Rights In Winter: The Death Of A Superstatute, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
The Voting Rights In Winter: The Death Of A Superstatute, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
Faculty Scholarship
The Voting Rights Act (“VRA”), the most successful civil rights statute in American history, is dying. In the recent Shelby County decision, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled that the anti-discrimination model, long understood as the basis for the VRA as originally enacted, is no longer the best way to understand today’s voting rights questions. As a result, voting rights activists need to face up to the fact that voting rights law and policy are at a critical moment of transition. It is likely the case that the superstatute we once knew as the VRA is no more and is never …
State’S Rights, Last Rights, And Voting Rights, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
State’S Rights, Last Rights, And Voting Rights, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
Faculty Scholarship
There are two ways to read the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County Alabama v. Holder: as a minimalist decision or as a decision that undermines the basic infrastructure of voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. In this Article, we present the case for reading Shelby County as deeply destabilizing. We argue that Shelby County has undermined three assumptions that are foundational to voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence. First, the Court has generally granted primacy of the federal government over the states. Second, the Court has deferred to Congress particularly where Congress is regulating at the intersection of race …