Racial Vote Dilution: Impact of the Reagan DOJ and the Burger Court on the Voting Rights Act

Since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the subsequentregistration of millions of minority voters, racially basedvoting discrimination has shifted from a strategy of vote denialto one of vote dilution. The VRA, especially Section 2 and 5,is the dramatic congressional effort to eliminate strategiesthat deny effective political participation to millions of citizens.However, the VRA has to be aggressively implemented by the U.S.Department of Justice (DOJ), and it has to be broadly validated,in concrete cases and controversies in federal courts, if itis to blunt the vote discrimination/dilution strategy. Whilethe Warren Court saw Section 5 as a radical but legitimate toolto end the perpetuation of voting discrimination, the BurgerCourt has seen Section 5 in less sweeping terms. And while theCarter administration DOJ aggressively supported minority plaintiffsin federal voting rights litigation brought under Sections 2and 5, the Reagan administration has redirected civil rightspolicy, including the methodology of implementing Sections 2and 5 of the VRA.     

Race,Representation, and the Voting Rights Act

Despite wide scholarly interest in the Voting Rights Act, surprisingly little is known about how its specific provisions affected Black political representation. In this article, we draw on theories of electoral accountability to evaluate the effect of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance provision, on the representation of Black interests in the 86th to 105th congresses. We find that members of Congress who represented jurisdictions subject to the preclearance requirement were substantially more supportive of civil rights–related legislation than legislators who did not represent covered jurisdictions. Moreover, we report that the effects were stronger when Black voters composed larger portions of the electorate and in more competitive districts. This result is robust to a wide range of model specifications and empirical strategies, and it persists over the entire time period under study. Our findings have especially important implications given the Supreme Court's recent decision in Shelby County v. Holder.     

Beyond the Voting Rights Act: White Responses to Black Political Power in Tchula, Mississippi

This article is a case study of the legal and political harassmentof a black mayor in Tchula, Mississippi. The case illustratesin the extreme the peculiar challenges that can be confrontedby local black elected officials in small southern jurisdictions,even where the population is predominantly black and the reachof the federal government otherwise assures black residentstheir rights to vote and hold public office. Effective enfranchisementof blacks in such communities is difficult because blacks possessfew resources with which to translate votes into economic developmentand because historic patterns of race relations in such backwaterareas stand as major cultural barriers to change.     

From Shaw v. Reno to Miller v. Johnson: Minority Representation and State Compliance with the Voting Rights Act

In 1994, four federal district courts applied the tests setforth in Shaw v. Reno in order to rule on the constitutionalityof congressional districting schemes that were comprised, inpart, of "majority-minority" districts. The difference of opinionthat arose among the lower courts indicated that Shaw had setforth unclear standards for determining (I) what role the federalcourts should play in monitoring state redistricting practices,and (2) whether a remedial redistricting plan is a racial gerrymander.Also, the disagreements exposed the weakness of some of theassumptions on which voting rights analysis is grounded. InMiller v. Johnson, the Supreme Court sought to address the lowercourts' concerns. Nonetheless, voting rights jurisprudence remainsunclear regarding (I) what constitutes a valid claim of vote-dilution,and (2) whether voting should be perceived as a group or individualright.     

Gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act of 1982: A public choice analysis of turnover in the U.S. House of Representatives

The present paper uses various data sets and statistical techniques to examine the outcome of gerrymandering under the Voting Rights Act of 1982 on turnover rates in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the competitiveness in Party primaries for House seats. Evidence presented here suggests that political redistricting at the federal level (namely for U.S. House seats) has tended to favor incumbents in both the Party primaries and general elections. In fact, some results suggest that turnover rates (for 1988) are between 8.9 and 10.3 percentage points lower within states that engaged in such redistricting efforts. Our findings generally support the main tenets of the public choice view of legislator behavior.     

Human Rights Culture: Solidarity,Diversity and the Right to be Different

The concept of a human rights culture has been crucial to the incorporation of the European Convention of Human Rights into UK law. In this paper media and activist representations of human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights are considered as indicative of an emerging human rights culture, especially around the Civil Partnerships Act 2004. A typology of representations of rights is developed and discussed. It is concluded that insofar as there is an emerging human rights culture, it is one that is concerned above all with creating and maintaining civic relationships rather than with the assertion of individual liberty, and as inviting political compromise rather than a principled stance on universal human rights.