“Dissing Congress or Viva Marbury?”

: “Returning to the central issue in the Shelby County case, and at the risk of repetition, my view remains that Congress, if it wishes to see section 5 of the Voting Rights Act sustained as an appropriate use of its power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, should have taken the Supreme Court’s warning, issued in 2009, more seriously. Even now, were Congress so inclined, it could set hearings on the question of suppression of minority voting rights and go about establishing a contemporary factual predicate for the necessity of section 5’s preclearance procedure in covered jurisdictions. To persuade the potentially persuadable (i.e., Justice Anthony Kennedy), Congress must prove to the Supreme Court that a problem in need of a solution exists as much in 2012 as it did in 1965 (or even in 2006, when Congress last renewed the VRA).”

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