For those who remember the injured marchers in Selma, the bloodied faces of John Lewis and others from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Voting Rights Act is seen as scripture: untouchable. That the Supreme Court has stricken a part of it provokes powerful feelings of dismay.
Shelby County v. Holder is a stunning decision. In striking §4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. introduced a new idea: that Congress must adjust its remedies to “current conditions” or face the terrible swift sword of constitutional review. A chief justice who began his tenure by pledging a jurisprudence of umpiring balls and strikes has changed the rules.
