In particular yesterday’s decision overturns nearly half a century’s guarantee of democracy for those Americans who had been denied that guarantee since the Republic’s founding. Within hours of the decision, at least four states that already had a history of vote suppression began introducing bills in their legislatures favoring more punitive voter-identification laws, fewer polling places in minority districts, and shorter hours in which to exercise the right that a democracy allegedly holds most sacrosanct. The court’s judicial action yesterday was created from bad faith and custom built for obfuscation. It pretends to uphold the rest of the 1965 act signed by Lyndon Johnson—and renewed by virtually unanimous, bi-partisan votes in the Congress as recently as seven years ago—while striking down the provision of the law that in fact makes the rest possible. In so crafting their majority opinion, five of the court’s nine justices set out to lose themselves amid weeds of legalese in the hope that history will lose sight of what they’ve done.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 18:35:28 +0000
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