The Chief Justice on the Spot

[groovedaddy]

A CASE sitting quietly in the Supreme Court’s in-basket promises to tell us more than almost any other about John G. Roberts Jr. and his evolution from spear carrier in the Reagan revolution to chief justice of the United States — and in the process set the direction of the debate over race and politics for years to come.

The question is whether Congress acted within its constitutional authority two years ago when it extended a central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for 25 years. An appeal challenging the act’s reauthorized Section 5, a provision that requires certain states and localities to receive federal permission before making any change in election procedures, awaits the justices when they return today from a holiday recess.

On the surface, this case appears an unlikely judicial bellwether. Extending the life of the “preclearance” provision, considered one of the civil rights movement’s crowning legislative accomplishments, is hardly novel. This was the fourth extension, in fact, and the second for a 25-year duration; the Supreme Court, which upheld the original Voting Rights Act in 1966, approved an earlier extension of Section 5 in 1980.

Nor does the issue appear fueled by the partisanship or ideological divisions that the current Supreme Court so often mirrors. The latest extension passed the Republican-controlled Congress overwhelmingly in 2006. President Bush promptly signed it into law, and a special panel of three federal judges upheld it last May.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/opinion/09greenhouse.html?th&emc=th

[ThomCat]

1. "the utter absence of any present-day pattern of

unconstitutional voting-rights deprivations of the type Section 5 was originally designed to address.”

That quote is disturbing. That is the justification for dismantling the protections. There are, in their view, no longer any deprivations of voting rights.

But is that true, or are they just no longer looking for the deprivation and no longer monitoring it?