Editorial Board
The Past, Present and Future of Voting Rights
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“History,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in surely one of the most irrefutable sentences ever to appear in a U.S. Supreme Court decision, “did not end in 1965.” To which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, citing Shakespeare and Santayana, replied: True, but it didn’t start then, either.
This dispute over how and when to measure history is at the heart of the court’s 5-to-4 decision striking down a crucial provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law whose historic accomplishments have been lauded by Roberts himself. His 24-page opinion and Ginsburg’s 37-page dissent amount to an argument over whether it’s time for the U.S., and in particular the American South, to move on.