Interesting post, I would need to read it carefully in order to properly comment (and I don't have time right now).
Hasen fired back, in his post here: http://electionlawblog.org/archi...ves/
003812.html
Now, you may be left of right and right of left, but referring to the "legislative process on which this country was founded" to determine whether _expansions to the franchise to combat pervasive racism_ is... well, Thomas-esque.
That is, it beggars reason. It shouts of blindness. It declares that the persons, Founders and therefore Sin-free, by axiom, who framed a Constitution for their benefit and as they saw fit... should not be second-guessed.
Well, they were wrong. They wrote in a Compromise that bankrupted them morally, they preserved the Slave Trade and then Slave-Owning and they (some of them) hoped it would die a natural death. But there's no Natural Death for an Unnatural Practice based on greed and violence. You have to kill it, preferably with a stick.
They limited the franchise to the people they could imagine voting. Not landowners, no, just the rich white men who could vote. They didn't put in a Voting Right, universal or otherwise; women couldn't vote, by common agreement these poor imbeciles were unable to do that kind of heavy lifting. History and wisdom to the contrary.
Blacks, too. Native Americans who lived among us. Immigrants who were not naturalized. They drew lines, and if I may be so bold they were not Good Lines, just lines.
We redraw those lines today, with an eye on systematic disenfranchisement in the South and in other areas, with awareness of the traditional practice of gerrymandering, of poll taxes and literacy tests and systematic felon disenfranchisement.
So you're definitely right of me, even if you're left of Center, wherever the center might be. I don't think it's to your right, though. You're pretty far over.
Nice blog, by the way, I don't think I've mentioned before.
Regards,
Eh N.
I have to disagree with Eh N. My comment, "the 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act are contrary to the legislative process on which the country was founded" was in reference to the racial quota system that is the de facto result of the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, as interpreted by the Courts. I think that that is contrary to the legislative process on which the country was founded, and therefore is constitutionally suspect.
Eh seems to be changing the subject -nothing that I've written, or that Roberts has written, could in any reasonable way be interpreted as an endorsement of denying women the vote, or that slavery should be allowed (although it may be worth noting that both these evils were corrected by Constitutional Amendment), to name just two of the topics Eh brings up.
Contrary to what Eh suggests, I do not argue - here or elsewhere - that the founding norms are forever etched in stone. But I do think it is fair to suggest that when something violates those founding norms, and the constitution has not been amended accordingly, the act in question is constitutionally suspect. And the question then, for Eh, is this: does he favor such a racial quota system for electing representatives?
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