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)

The insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, may have been the work of a mob, but robed judges stood behind it. According to Douglas, a law professor and author of Vote for US, the Supreme Court's decisions over the past decade have "contributed to the rise of anti-democracy forces animating our elections." Some rulings support gerrymandered legislative districts; some defer election standards to state officials whose interest it is to keep those in power there; and some simply erode laws protecting voting rights. "It rules in incremental ways," writes the author, "chopping away a little here, a little there." The result is a constitutional guarantee undermined to the point of meaninglessness. When Georgia voters turned out in the 2021 runoff elections and put two Democrats in the Senate, the Republican legislature responded by slashing the number of ballot drop boxes placed in mostly Black precincts, a blatant exercise in voter suppression. Blandly stating that it's up to the states to decide, the Court has disenfranchised millions of voters. This began longer than a decade ago, of course; Douglas repeatedly circles back to Bush v. Gore and the 2000 presidential election, when the Supreme Court held that a "recount would take too long," placing the whim of the legislature over the will of the voters. "Essentially," he adds, "the court's approach means that state legislatures should have little oversight from the courts, regardless of whether it's before or after an election." The Court may have rebuffed many of Trump's falsely premised lawsuits, but that's no guarantee that it will intervene judicially the next time a state decides to float a slate of false electors--a scary thought that's entirely in keeping with many of the Court's recent decisions. A solid argument for judicial reform--and if not that, bypassing the Supreme Court whenever possible. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.