Voting Rights Act of 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, with its triggering device and automatic remedies, not only provides an effective means to eradicate voting inequality but also accentuates the breadth and variety of congressional power under the fifteenth amendment

The Voting Rights Act\u27s Fight to Stay Rational: Shelby County v. Holder

This commentary previews an upcoming Supreme Court case, Shelby County v. Holder, in which the Court may decide whether Congress\u27s 2006 reauthorization of Section 5 and Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was constitutional

State’s Rights, Last Rights, and Voting Rights

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 and voting. Third, the Court and Congress have understood that racial discrimination is a problem and have operated from a similar conception of what racial discrimination means. Shelby County undermines all three assumptions. We explore what this means for voting rights policy, law, and jurisprudence going forward

Dr. Patrick T. Conley on the Law and Order Constitution

In this interview, Dr. Patrick T. Conley, constitutional historian and Dorr scholar, discusses the deficiencies of the Law & Order Constitution of 1843, the provisions of the People\u27s Constitution of 1841, and his personal involvement in the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention of 1977. To view this video interview please visit the Dorr Rebellion Project web site’s video gallery: http://library.providence.edu/dps/projects/dorr/video.php

Assessing Reconstruction: Did the South Undergo Revolutionary Change?

With the end of the Civil War, came a number of unanswered questions Reconstruction would attempt to answer for the South. While the South underwent economic, political and social changes for a short period, old traditions continued to persist resulting in racist sentiment

Democracy, Race, and Multiculturalism in the Twenty-First Century: Will the Voting Rights Act Ever be Obsolete?

Part I of this essay begins one hundred years before the passage of the Act, with Reconstruction. I briefly canvas the interracial alliances of the Reconstruction and Redemption periods, underscoring that American democracy has been most responsive to the masses, including working class whites, when interracial alliances between whites and blacks commanded majority power. I then recount how a politics of white supremacy animated and perpetuated racial schisms between blacks and whites for a century in the South. Part II describes how the Act came to be passed, emphasizing the role of protest and coalition politics in its enactment, and the dramatic impact of the Act in fostering active participation by communities of color in American politics. Part III explores the opportunities and challenges presented by growing diversity of the electorate, underscoring the modem manifestations of historic racial divides in American politics. There is a continued, albeit less pronounced, strain of race loyalty in voting patterns that we have not yet vanquished

Jim Crow in New York

More than 108,000 New Yorkers cannot vote because of a conviction in their past. Almost half of these disenfranchised citizens have completed their prison sentence and are living and working in the community