John Roberts

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• SOURCE: Governing
  2/9/2022
  

  The Voting Rights Act is in Real Trouble

  Since the 1986 ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court has held that states must create districts where minority voters have a reasonable chance of electing their candidate of choice. SCOTUS is poised to overthrow that standard, gutting another provision of the Voting Rights Act. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/17/2022
  

  Manchin and Sinema are Fulfilling John Roberts's Vision

  by Ronald Brownstein

  "Roberts, who served as a young clerk to conservative Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist and as a Justice Department assistant in the Reagan administration, has long expressed hostility to federal oversight of voting and election rules."

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• SOURCE: Vox
  7/21/2021
  

  How America Lost the Commitment to the Right to Vote

  "The Supreme Court, Justice Elena Kagan lamented in a dissenting opinion earlier this month, 'has treated no statute worse' than the Voting Rights Act. She’s right."

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  3/1/2021
  

  Republicans Are Trying to Kill What’s Left of the Voting Rights Act

  by Ari Berman

  Voting Rights expert Ari Berman says that Chief Justice John Roberts's career gives troubling indications of how the court will rule on cases that could render the Voting Rights act impotent. 

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• SOURCE: Vox
  2/23/2021
  

  The Supreme Court is About to Hear Two Cases that Could Destroy what Remains of the Voting Rights Act

  Chief Justice John Roberts has a long record of hostility to the Voting Rights Act, and authored the decision that weakened it. The Supreme Court is preparing to hear cases that may allow him to destroy the VRA. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/11/2021
  

  American Democracy Is Only 55 Years Old—And Hanging by a Thread

  Atlantic Editor Vann Newkirk examines the recent and imperiled history of American democracy since the Voting Rights Act, including by interviewing Charles Hamilton, co-author of the keystone book "Black Power." 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  10/22/2020
  

  The Supreme Court Is Helping Republicans Rig Elections

  by Adam Serwer

  Historian Lawrence Goldstone supports the argument that today's Roberts Court is continuing the jurisprudence of the post-Reconstruction era by denying the racism of restrictions on voting even as nonwhite voters are disenfranchised. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Globe
  9/6/2020
  

  The Supreme Court’s Starring Role In Democracy’s Demise

  by Carol Anderson

  The Supreme Court today repeats the shameful actions of the courts in the 1890s, which gave judicial cover to state laws explicitly designed to disenfranchise Black voters, by accepting bad faith arguments that the laws in question were race-neutral. 

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  8/24/2020
  

  So Far Away from 1965

  by Julian Zelizer

  By the early 1980s, a new generation opposed to African American political participation was resurrecting the old bromide of “voter fraud” in what would eventually become a successful attack on the VRA.

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• SOURCE: Madman of Chu
  6-29-15
  

  Han Chinese Marriage: A Lesson for Chief Justice John Roberts

  by Andrew Meyer

  Marriage has evolved (much more recently than most people imagine) to become a relationship between equals, thus there is no justification to exclude same-gender couples from the marital bond.

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• SOURCE: Education News
  5-12-15
  

  Historian Alan Singer says he’s not qualified to be on the Supreme Court and neither are Roberts, Scalia, Alito or Thomas

  That’s because he’s an activist and so are they.

• SOURCE: WaPo
  6-25-13
  

  Dana Milbank: Roberts’s Cynical Treatment of MLK in Voting Ruling

  Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post.The Roberts court chose a most cynical way to celebrate this summer’s 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s penultimate day in session before the Aug. 28 semi-centenary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the court’s conservative majority announced a 5 to 4 ruling that guts one of King’s greatest triumphs, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (The Roberts court weakened another of King’s triumphs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in a pair of 5-to-4 rulings on Monday.)

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• Actually, Scalia's Legal Logic Permits Gun Control

  by Alan Singer

  "The key issues I want to address in this article are the constitutional principles Mr. LaPierre is so intent on defending."