Suchergebnisse

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has allowed the Supreme Court to intervene in the political process from the 1800s through the US presidential election of 2000. The landmark case, Bush v. Gore, rudely awakened Americans to the fact that the Constitution does not grant individual citizens the right to vote. The Equal Protection Clause itself makes no mention of voting as an inherent right. In the 1960s, the Court used the Equal Protection Clause to involve itself in the causes of reapportionment, vote dilution, & disenfranchisement. However, in many of these cases, it is evident that without Congress, the Court decisions are worth little more than lip service. This reliance on Congress, & a barrier of distrust, led directly to the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore. In fact, it was ultimately the Supreme Court's distrust of Congress's ability to protect the Equal Protection Clause that caused the Court to halt the FL recount. Though the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was unprecedented, it represents only the latest incarnation of the Supreme Court's inherently regulatory nature. It is unfortunate that this decision has degraded both the Court's reputation & the spirit of American democracy. K. A. Larsen

Argues that the decisions of the US Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore are an example of a new model of equal protection that emerged with earlier Court decisions regarding race-conscious redistricting. Attention is called to George W. Bush's earlier appearance before the US Supreme Court in Bush v. Vera, a highly partisan challenge to 1991 congressional redistricting in TX. It is contended that both Bush cases involve "structural equal protection" that is aimed at regulating institutional arrangements within which politics are carried out, rather than at protecting the rights of individuals or groups, especially disadvantaged groups. Numerous cases that paved the way for the establishment of the new equal protection doctrine are examined, along with the Court's rationale for intervening in the 2000 presidential election. It is contended that the equality problems stressed by the Court in Bush v. Gore were not as severe as those that could have been resolved with a manual recount, & the Court's recent use of equal protection produces less, not more, equality & democracy. J. Lindroth

The year the Voting Rights Act was passed, Langston Hughes published Long View: Negro. "Sighted through the [t]elescope of dreams," Hughes wrote, Emancipation loomed very large: "But turn the telescope around, Look through the larger end- And wonder why What was so large Becomes so small Again." We don't really need to wonder why the political side of the First Reconstruction failed; there were so many reasons. One was the exhaustion of the national commitment to ensuring black equality and its replacement by a cynical bipartisan compromise in which black aspirations played no role. Another was the "progressive" belief that ethnic politics was the enemy of good government. Yet a third was the United States Supreme Court, which in a series of decisions from United States v. Cruikshank through Giles v. Harris gutted African Americans' ability to protect themselves through the political process. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is perhaps the cornerstone of the Second Reconstruction. President Johnson rightly called it "one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom." But it seems we are at a moment when the telescope is turning again; when the expansive future is about to become a contracted present. And the reasons for a potential Second Redemption bear a haunting resemblance to the explanations offered for the First. Again, we have an exhaustion of the national commitment to economic and racial justice for blacks; again, "progressives" are suggesting that attention to race has diverted us from more important issues; again, we have a Supreme Court that is hostile to minority political empowerment. When it comes to things in danger of becoming so small again, the black presence in Congress looms high on the list. The past five years have seen a sustained legal assault on newly created majority- black congressional districts in the South, and there is a very real possibility that for the first time since the end of the First Reconstruction, black representation in southern congressional ...

AbstractWhile majority‐minority districts are bitterly litigated in the courts, a "quiet revolution" is taking place in jurisdictions across the nation employing the alternative system of cumulative voting.

In this Essay, we want to suggest two ways in which people's experience with the Internet may affect how they think politics ought to be organized, and to consider the consequences for the political aspirations of minority communities. First, the notion of "virtual communities" – that is, communities that affiliate along nongeographic lines – may provide new support for alternatives to traditional geographic districting practices. As Americans become more comfortable with the idea that people can belong to voluntarily created, overlapping, fluid, nongeographically defined communities, which may be as important as the physical communities in which they live, they may become more interested in election methods that recognize such communities. This possibility offers new political opportunities to minority voters, especially Asian Americans and Hispanics, as well as to nonracially defined minority groups. At the same time, however; the Internet may give added strength to the appeal of "unmediated expression" – that is, the ability of individuals to express their preferences directly, rather than through institutional filters. This may further fuel pressures for direct, rather than representative, democracy. This possibility poses new threats to minority rights, which are often better protected through a less purely majoritarian, less populist process.