The Court v. the Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights

The Supreme Court has been undermining voting rights for 50 years, according to this full-throated critique. Legal scholar Douglas (Vote for US) not only covers major turning points like Shelby v. Holder, the 2013 case in which the court overruled the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which in 2010 opened the floodgates of corporate money in U.S. elections; he also digs into more minor cases to show how they have been fashioned by conservative justices into the building blocks of what he suggests is the court’s explicit project to curtail voting rights, especially under Chief Justice John Roberts. Such cases include one concerned with who can run on a presidential ballot as an independent, and another focused on when write-in votes can be made. In these cases, Douglas characterizes Roberts as a crafty jurist consciously planting the seeds that will undermine voting rights in future cases by adding “dicta,” or items not central to the decision, and constructing opinions with a feigned narrowness (like in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, a precursor to Shelby) that he later uses to argue for substantive changes in the law. This granular analysis, though somewhat speculative since it relies on reading between the lines, adds up to a shockingly convincing explanation of the court’s motives. Douglas brings the receipts. (May)