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Articles 61 - 86 of 86
Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
Self-Defeating Minimalism, Adam B. Cox
Self-Defeating Minimalism, Adam B. Cox
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
Everyone wants a piece of Tom DeLay. The former majority leader is under investigation and indictment, and even the Supreme Court threatened last Term to undo one of his signal achievements. In 2003, DeLay orchestrated a highly unusual mid-decade revision of Texas’s congressional map. The revised map was a boon to Republicans, shifting the Texas congressional delegation from 15 Republicans and 17 Democrats to 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats. The map was attacked as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and a violation of the Voting Rights Act. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear those challenges in LULAC v. Perry, many …
Cultural Compactness, Daniel R. Oritz
Cultural Compactness, Daniel R. Oritz
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The Supreme Court’s opinions in LULAC v. Perry, the Texas redistricting case, confounded expectation. While many believed that the Court would develop the law governing partisan gerrymandering in one direction or another, it did not. As exactly before, such claims are justiciable but there is no law to govern them. In other words, the courthouse doors are open, but until some plaintiff advances a novel theory persuasive to five justices, no claims will succeed. On the other hand, few expected the Court to make any major changes to doctrine under the Voting Rights Act and Shaw v. Reno. But LULAC …
This Way To The Egress And Other Reflections On Partisan Gerrymandering Claims In Light Of Lulac V. Perry, Bernard Grofman
This Way To The Egress And Other Reflections On Partisan Gerrymandering Claims In Light Of Lulac V. Perry, Bernard Grofman
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
After winning control of both houses of the legislature and the governorship, Texas Republicans eventually succeeded in redistricting Texas’s congressional seats in 2003, replacing a 2001 court-drawn plan. LULAC v. Perry reviewed a number of challenges to that second redistricting. The decision deals with a multiplicity of issues, including, most importantly, the standard for violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the nature of tests for unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. While there are some clear holdings in the case, several of them reflect different combinations of Justices in the majority and, since there are six different opinions, it …
Anthony Kennedy's Blind Quest, Scot Powe, Steve Bickerstaff
Anthony Kennedy's Blind Quest, Scot Powe, Steve Bickerstaff
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
League of United Latin American Citizens [LULAC] v. Perry embraced, in the context of partisan gerrymandering, Felix Frankfurter’s conclusion that the Supreme Court should not enter the political thicket of legislative apportionment. Two years earlier in Vieth v. Jubelirer, the Court split 4–1–4 on the justiciability of partisan gerrymandering. O’Conner and the three conservatives held it was nonjusticiable. Each of the four moderate liberals offered a test showing it was justiciable. Kennedy dissented from the conservatives while simultaneously rejecting each of the four tests offered. He announced he was waiting for a better test. When far superior tests were offered …
Lulac On Partisan Gerrymandering: Some Clarity, More Uncertainty, Richard Briffault
Lulac On Partisan Gerrymandering: Some Clarity, More Uncertainty, Richard Briffault
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
In League of United Latin American Citizens (“LULAC”) v. Perry, the Supreme Court, for the second time in two years, agonized over partisan gerrymandering. LULAC’s rejection of a Democratic challenge to the Texas legislature’s mid-decade pro-Republican congressional redistricting resembles the Court’s 2004 dismissal of a Democratic gerrymandering suit against Pennsylvania’s pro-Republican congressional redistricting plan in Vieth v. Jubelirer. As in Vieth, the Justices wrangled over justiciability, the substantive standard for assessing the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering claims, and the interplay of justiciability and constitutionality. As in Vieth, the Court was highly fragmented: Vieth produced five separate opinions, while LULAC took …
Strict In Theory, Loopy In Fact, Nathaniel Persily
Strict In Theory, Loopy In Fact, Nathaniel Persily
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
Most Supreme Court-watchers find the decision in LULAC v. Perry notable for the ground it breaks concerning Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the ground it refuses to break on the topic of partisan gerrymandering. I tend to think the Court’s patchwork application of Section 2 to strike down a district on vote dilution grounds is not all that dramatic, nor is its resolution of the partisan gerrymandering claims all that surprising. The truly unprecedented development in the case for me was Justice Scalia’s vote to uphold what he considered a racial classification under the Equal Protection Clause, …
The End Of Preclearance As We Knew It: How The Supreme Court Transformed Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Peyton Mccrary, Christopher Seaman, Richard Valelly
The End Of Preclearance As We Knew It: How The Supreme Court Transformed Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Peyton Mccrary, Christopher Seaman, Richard Valelly
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article’s analysis reveals that by the 1990s the intent, or purpose, prong of Section 5 had become the dominant basis for objections to discriminatory voting changes. During that decade an astonishing 43 percent of all objections were, according to this assessment, based on discriminatory purpose alone. Thus, a key issue for Congress in determining how to deal with the preclearance requirement of the Act due to expire in 2007-assuming it seeks to restore the protection of minority voting rights that existed before January 2000-is whether to revise the language of Section 5 so as to restore the long-accepted definition …
From Laredo To Fort Worth: Race, Politics And The Texas Redistricting Case, Ellen D. Katz
From Laredo To Fort Worth: Race, Politics And The Texas Redistricting Case, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
LULAC v. Perry held that Texas violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when it displaced nearly 100,000 Latino residents from a congressional district in Laredo to protect the Republican incumbent they refused to support. At the same time, the Justices let stand the dismantling of a so-called “coalition” district in Fort Worth where African-American voters comprising a minority of the district’s population allegedly enjoyed effective control in deciding the district’s representative. Only Justice Kennedy supported the outcome in both Laredo and Fort Worth. His opinion marks the first time that he, or indeed a majority of the Justices, …
Documenting Discrimination In Voting: Judicial Findings Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Since 1982, Ellen D. Katz, Margaret Aisenbrey, Anna Baldwin, Emma Cheuse, Anna Weisbrodt
Documenting Discrimination In Voting: Judicial Findings Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Since 1982, Ellen D. Katz, Margaret Aisenbrey, Anna Baldwin, Emma Cheuse, Anna Weisbrodt
Other Publications
The Voting Rights Initiative ("VRI") at the University of Michigan Law School was created during the winter of 2005 to help inform [...] the debates that led to this latest congressional reauthorization and the legal challenge to it that is certain to follow. A cooperative research venture involving 100 students working under faculty direction set out to produce a detailed portrait of litigation brought since 1982 under Section 2. This Report evaluates the results of that survey. The comprehensive data set may be found in a searchable form at http://www.votingreport.org or http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/votingrights. The aim of this report and the accompanying …
Documenting Discrimination In Voting: Judicial Findings Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Since 1982, Ellen D. Katz, Margaret Aisenbrey, Anna Baldwin, Emma Cheuse, Anna Weisbrodt
Documenting Discrimination In Voting: Judicial Findings Under Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act Since 1982, Ellen D. Katz, Margaret Aisenbrey, Anna Baldwin, Emma Cheuse, Anna Weisbrodt
Other Publications
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of one of the most remarkable and consequential pieces of congressional legislation ever enacted. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ("the VRA") targeted massive disfranchisement of African-American citizens in numerous Southern states. It imposed measures drastic in scope and extraordinary in effect. The VRA eliminated the use of literacy tests and other "devices" that Southern jurisdictions had long employed to prevent black residents from registering and voting. The VRA imposed on these jurisdictions onerous obligations to prove to federal officials that proposed changes to their electoral system would not discriminate against minority voters. Resistance …
Not Enough Of A Minority?: Arab Americans And The Language Assistance Provisions (Section 203) Of The Voting Rights Act, Brenda Fathy Abdelall
Not Enough Of A Minority?: Arab Americans And The Language Assistance Provisions (Section 203) Of The Voting Rights Act, Brenda Fathy Abdelall
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
With the Voting Rights Act set to expire in 2007, debate has ensued regarding the protections it provides for minority groups. Section 203 of the Act protects language minorities, but under these protections, only four minority groups are afforded bilingual access to voting materials. This Note argues that the Act is imperative to the protection of minority voters, especially those belonging to a language minority group. This Note further argues that not only should the Voting Rights Act be renewed, but § 203 should be revised to include Arab Americans. The Note focuses on the Arab American community because it …
After Georgia V. Ashcroft: The Primacy Of Proportionality, Felix B. Chang
After Georgia V. Ashcroft: The Primacy Of Proportionality, Felix B. Chang
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This Note argues that the majority in Ashcroft have left courts with an unadministerable standard-not so much for reasons that Justice Souter articulated in his dissent, but rather because the Court provided no guidance on navigating around the myriad of factors in the convoluted totality analyses. Part I examines two cases after Ashcroft which represent different degrees of racial vote dilution: Shirt v. Hazeltine and Session v. Perry. Through other post-Ashcroft cases, Part II teases out the differences (i) between influence districts as injury and remedy and (ii) between a jurisdiction's Section 5 and Section 2 obligations--details closely related …
After Georgia V. Ashcroft: The Primacy Of Proportionality, Felix B. Chang
After Georgia V. Ashcroft: The Primacy Of Proportionality, Felix B. Chang
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Note argues that the majority in Ashcroft have left courts with an unadministerable standard-not so much for reasons that Justice Souter articulated in his dissent, but rather because the Court provided no guidance on navigating around the myriad of factors in the convoluted totality analyses. In the face of this uncertainty, lower courts will rely increasingly on the proportionality standard of Johnson v. De Grandy, which marked the midpoint in the judicial shift from Justice Brennan's worldview to Justice O'Connor's world-view. Part I examines two cases after Ashcroft which represent different degrees of racial vote dilution: Shirt v. …
Turning The Page On Section 5: The Implication Of Multiracial Coalition Districts On Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Daniel A. Zibel
Turning The Page On Section 5: The Implication Of Multiracial Coalition Districts On Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Daniel A. Zibel
Michigan Law Review
This Note analyzes the use of coalition districts in light of current section 5 and equal protection jurisprudence and argues that, in some circumstances, the Equal Protection Clause compels the use of coalition districts to achieve non retrogression under section 5. Part I examines the use of coalition districts, using the litigation in Page v. Bartels as an example. It then argues that the Supreme Court's opinion in Georgia v. Ashcroft permits jurisdictions to create viable racial coalition districts to comply with section 5. Part II argues that while Georgia v. Ashcroft permits the use of coalition districts to achieve …
Reinforcing Representation: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz
Reinforcing Representation: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz
Michigan Law Review
A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …
Reinforcing Representation: Enforcing The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz
Reinforcing Representation: Enforcing The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …
Lowering The Preclearance Hurdle Reno V. Bossier Parish School Board, 120 S. Ct. 866 (2000), Alaina C. Beverly
Lowering The Preclearance Hurdle Reno V. Bossier Parish School Board, 120 S. Ct. 866 (2000), Alaina C. Beverly
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Case Note examines a recent Supreme Court decision that collapses the purpose and effect prongs of Section 5, effectively lowering the barrier to preclearance for covered jurisdictions. In Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board II the Court determined that Section 5 disallows only voting plans that are enacted with a retrogressive purpose (i.e., with the purpose to "worsen" the position of minority voters). The Court held that Section 5 does not prohibit preclearance of a plan enacted with a discriminatory purpose but without a retrogressive effect. Evidence of a Section 2 violation alone will not be enough to prove …
Can Minority Voting Rights Survive Miller V. Johnson, Laughlin Mcdonald
Can Minority Voting Rights Survive Miller V. Johnson, Laughlin Mcdonald
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Part I of this Article reviews the congressional redistricting process in Georgia, particularly the State's efforts to comply with the Voting Rights Act and avoid the dilution of minority voting strength. Part II describes the plaintiffs' constitutional challenge and the State's asserted defenses, or more accurately its lack of asserted defenses. Part III argues that the decision of the majority rests upon wholly false assumptions about the colorblindness of the political process and the harm caused by remedial redistricting. Part IV notes the expansion in Miller of the cause of action first recognized in Shaw v. Reno. Part V …
The Empitness Of Majority Rule, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
The Empitness Of Majority Rule, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In this Note, the author steers away from the current substantive debates surrounding the Voting Rights Act, its various amendments, and the "correct" way of interpreting its intended benefits and constitutionally accepted mandates. Instead, indirectly joins the many "radical" voices advocating for a departure from the majoritarian stranglehold-the decision-making process where fifty percent plus one of the voting population carry the election. The author does so not by suggesting yet another mechanism by which representatives may be elected, but by critiquing the perceived underpinnings of our democratic system of government. The author does not profess to delineate a definitive interpretation …
Ugly: An Inquiry Into The Problem Of Racial Gerrymandering Under The Voting Rights Act, Daniel D. Polsby, Robert D. Popper
Ugly: An Inquiry Into The Problem Of Racial Gerrymandering Under The Voting Rights Act, Daniel D. Polsby, Robert D. Popper
Michigan Law Review
In the discussion that follows, we focus on the case of congressional districting rather than on districting in general. Although we proceed in this manner for the sake of clarity, it is also true that no single, all-purpose normative theory of electoral mechanics will cover every case of democratic representation, from county commissions to mosquito control districts to sovereign legislatures. We do not claim that one can generalize our argument to every sort of election to which the VRA might apply. Yet we think our argument does approximate a theory of general application.
Race And Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw V. Reno, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Samuel Isaacharoff
Race And Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw V. Reno, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Samuel Isaacharoff
Michigan Law Review
Shaw is no doubt a major opinion that attempts to define limits on the use of racial or ethnic classifications in electoral redistricting. The main thrust of this article is to assess the critical question of whether Shaw renders unconstitutional the type of race-conscious realignment of electoral configurations that have given meaning to the voting rights reforms of the past two decades. In making this assessment, we try to ascertain exactly how the Court has limited the use of race-conscious districting, and we try to determine whether there is any jurisprudential coherence to the Court's latest confrontation with the law …
Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," And Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw V. Reno, Richard H. Pildes, Richard G. Niemi
Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," And Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw V. Reno, Richard H. Pildes, Richard G. Niemi
Michigan Law Review
This article attempts to define the constitutional principles that characterize Shaw and to suggest how those principles might be applied in a consistent, meaningful way. Part I, in which we argue that Shaw must be understood to rest on a distinctive conception of the kinds of harms against which the Constitution protects, is the theoretical heart of the article. We call these expressive harms, as opposed to more familiar, material harms. In Part II, we briefly survey the history of previous, largely unsuccessful, efforts in other legal contexts to give principled content to these kinds of harms in redistricting. …
Polarized Voting And The Political Process: The Transformation Of Voting Rights Jurisprudence, Samuel Issacharoff
Polarized Voting And The Political Process: The Transformation Of Voting Rights Jurisprudence, Samuel Issacharoff
Michigan Law Review
This article attempts to provide an analytic framework for the evolved voting rights law as it confronts the persistent effects of racial factionalism in the electoral arena. Insight into the corrosiveness of racially polarized voting and its frustration of minority electoral opportunity has organized and guided the new voting rights jurisprudence. This article will argue that the combination of process distortions from majority domination of electoral outcomes and substantive deprivation from minority exclusion defines this area of law and protects it against challenge from currently fashionable academic currents. The central insights gathered from the focus on polarized voting, I will …
The Triumph Of Tokenism: The Voting Rights Act And The Theory Of Black Electoral Success, Lani Guinier
The Triumph Of Tokenism: The Voting Rights Act And The Theory Of Black Electoral Success, Lani Guinier
Michigan Law Review
In this article, my goal is to organize the divergent themes of black electoral success strategy within one conceptual framework in order to give the themes more cogency and attention. Having exposed the existence of a coherent theory, I then argue that the theory posits many of the correct goals but fails to provide a realistic mechanism for achieving them. The article proceeds in three Parts. In Part I, I develop the ideological and statutory roots of black electoral success theory. In Part II, I analyze the inadequacies of current voting rights litigation and its failure to realize the statute's …
Voting Rights Act Section 2: Racially Polarized Voting And The Minority Community's Representative Of Choice, Evelyn Elayne Shockley
Voting Rights Act Section 2: Racially Polarized Voting And The Minority Community's Representative Of Choice, Evelyn Elayne Shockley
Michigan Law Review
A much needed congressional effort to give substance to African-American suffrage resulted in the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (the Act). Although the fifteenth amendment gave African-American men the right to vote in 1870, almost a hundred years later they were still largely unable to exercise the right. This condition did not result from apathy on the part of African-American voters, but rather from their inability to overcome barriers set up by white racists. Practices whites instituted, such as "[l]iteracy and 'understanding' tests, poll taxes, the white primary, intimidation, [and] violence," prevented African-Americans from realizing their constitutional …
Racial Prejudice And Scholarly Prejudice: New Confrontations At The Selma Bridge, J. Mills Thornton Iii
Racial Prejudice And Scholarly Prejudice: New Confrontations At The Selma Bridge, J. Mills Thornton Iii
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by David J. Garrow