A note on Abelian varieties embedded in quadrics

We show that if A is a d-dimensional abelian variety in a smooth quadric of dimension 2d then d=1 and A is an elliptic curve of bidegree (2,2) on a quadric. This extends a result of Van de Ven which says that A only can be embedded in P^{2d} when d=1 or 2.Comment: 5 page

The Future of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the Hands of a Conservative Court

This Essay argues that the future of the majority-minority district is in peril, as a conservative majority on the Court stands poised to strike down section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. When the Court takes up the constitutionality of Section 2, binding precedent will play a secondary role at best. Instead, the Justices’ policy goals and ideological preferences - namely, their personal disdain for the use of race in public life - will guide the Court’s conclusion. In this vein, Justice Kennedy holds the fate of the Act in his hands. To be clear, this Essay is not trying to prognosticate the future of the Act. Instead, it is far more intrigued by the many lessons that the fate of the Act offers about the Court as an institution; the Court’s treatment of colored communities and their interests; and the role political attitudes play in guiding judicial behavior. As the Court continues to position itself at the center of many political controversies, these lessons gain greater urgency

The Voting Rights in Winter: The Death of a Superstatute

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the U.S. Supreme Court signaled that the anti-discrimination model, long understood as the basis for the VRA as originally enacted, is no longer the best way to understand today’s voting rights questions.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 to return. If so, we need to figure out what, if anything, can, will, or should replace it. But before figuring out where to go from here, we need to understand first how we arrived at the moment of the VRA’s disintegration so as not to repeat the mistakes of the not too distant past. In this Article, we argue that the VRA is dying because the consensus over the existence and persistence of racial discrimination in voting has dissolved. From this premise, we outline three paths for the future of voting rights policy: (1) rebuilding a new consensus over the racial discrimination model; (2) forging a new consensus over what we call an autonomy model; or (3) reconceiving voting rights in universal terms