Vol. 2 No. 11 (November, 1992) pp. 169-171
CONTROVERSIES IN MINORITY VOTING: THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT IN
PERSPECTIVE by Bernard Grofman and Chandler Davidson (eds.).
Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1992.
Reviewed by Royce Hanson (The University of Texas at Dallas)
It would be hard to gainsay the claim by almost every author in
Grofman and Chandler's collection of essays that the Voting
Rights Act has been one of the spectacular successes of the Civil
Rights Revolution and Lyndon Johnson's presidency. Especially
since the enactment of the 1982 amendments to the Act, which
replaced the crabbed "discriminatory intent" test of
CITY OF MOBILE V. BOLDEN with a "results" test for
dilution of minority voting power, it has been the instrument of
choice in the continuing effort to empower black and Hispanic
voters.
The result of a Brookings Conference on the Voting Rights Act,
this book will be of interest to both the general reader and the
specialist. Chandler Davidson's introductory chapter on the
history of the Voting Rights Act is a good thumbnail sketch of
the Act, its consequences, and the controversies it has
generated. Morgan Kousser's chapter comparing the first and
second Reconstructions is an especially welcome reminder of the
importance of judicial and administrative enforcement of good
intentions. Political rights -- even when guaranteed by the
Constitution -- are fragile when they conflict with the political
interests of a temporary "majority" or depend for their
maintenance on a hostile or indifferent judiciary.
Kousser's assessment that the First Reconstruction died from too
much democracy and that the second has survived because party
competition has shriveled challenges us to think of a better
explanation. He may, in fact provide one himself, in showing how
the post Civil War Supreme Court developed doctrines that were
hostile to the advancement of minority rights. Particularly
illuminating is his contrast of the indifference of the post
Civil War Court to the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1872 with the
steadfastness of both the liberal and conservative Courts of the
recent past to the basic thrust of the Voting Rights Act (even in
spite of BOLDEN). The theme of "too much democracy,"
however, or at least too much majority rule, has echoes in a
provocative essay by Bruce Cain. He suggests that populist and
majoritarian impulses are today finding ways of weakening the
political power minorities have won through the Voting Rights Act
by limiting legislative power.
For the specialist in minority rights and politics, the chapters
on expert witness testimony, by Bernard Grofman, and on the
voting rights bar, by Gregory Caldeira, are both revealing and
unsatisfying. Grofman is understandably satisfied with his own
performance as an expert witness. Justice Brennan endorsed
Grofman's ecological regression technique for measuring racially
polarized voting in THORNBURG V. GINGLES, and Grofman manages to
accept Brennan's wisdom with reasonably good grace. Ultimately,
he dismisses the debate among political scientists over how best
to measure vote dilution and polarization as "esoteric
quibbles that lack any practical importance and that serve mostly
to prolong trials and to increase the incomes of expert witnesses
for both sides." Winners can afford to be generous, and one
Supreme Court opinion tends to trump a royal flush of refereed
articles.
This dismissal of the debate over methods of measuring
polarization and dilution is ultimately unsatisfying, however
artfully done. Old legal realists like me have a hard time
accepting the statistical preferences of judges, even ones we
greatly admire, at face value. While Grofman has defended his
methods in the professional literature, I, for one, would have
liked a bit more justification for dismissing multiple regression
analyses that seem to show that party affiliation accounts for
more of the effect than race on electoral outcomes in some
circumstances.
The chapters on expert witnesses and litigation pulse with
(perhaps unintended) ideas for empirical research. What, for
instance, is the effect of expert testimony on judges or juries
(if
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any)? How are witnesses selected and prepared for trial? To what
extent do expert witnesses become, with experience, advocates for
both substantive remedies and analytical techniques? How
significant is the selection of plaintiffs? Is there a difference
in the outcome of cases based on the way in which evidence is
presented or in the relative expertise and experience of
plaintiff and defense attorneys? What has been the relationship
between increased minority representation as the result of Voting
Rights litigation and substantive policy outcomes? If the book
made no other contribution, it is a source of provocative
questions that should keep our profession usefully employed.
Taken together, the essays erect a strong defense of the Voting
Rights Act against the criticisms of its detractors that it has
become, in its implementation, an affirmative action program for
minority politicians. The defense might have been stronger and
even more persuasive if Abigail Thernstrom, or someone equally
critical of the Act had been included in the collection of
authors. As it is, she serves as the favorite punching bag for
several of the authors without an opportunity to counterpunch for
herself. I agree with the editors that the Voting Rights Act is
not a quota system, and that it does not REQUIRE proportional
representation of minorities. I am less sanguine that it is not
being bent, by both those who mean well and those who do not, to
that result. There is a strong tendency among trial courts to
approve redistricting arrangements that produce racially
proportionate schemes of representation.
The writers are reasonably satisfied with the outcome of the
results test developed by GINGLES. There are glimmers of doubt in
a number of the essays about the continuing efficacy of
litigation as a benign tool of political reform. Cain and others
suggest serious limitations in using case-specific litigation as
the principal means of reforming an intricate political
instrumentality like a representative system.
As Caldeira notes, litigation works best when there are clear and
verifiable outcomes. Litigation tends to be linear in its logic.
If a court finds dilution of voting power as a consequence of
polarized voting behavior by whites and minorities, it seeks an
enforceable remedy that will vitiate the dilution (but not
necessarily the polarization). More often than not, that remedy
has been single-member districts that produce a distribution of
legislators that is nearly proportionate to the racial
distribution of the population. While such a result is by no
means a requirement of the law, it is much harder to attack than
any other result. It is easier to impose single-member districts
as a remedy than more complicated voting methods, such as
proportional representation or cumulative voting, although such
approaches may offer better protection for equally empowered
voters to self-select the political faction to which they wish to
adhere. It is easier because it is a familiar solution and seems
to be less of an intrusion by the courts into the political
process. That is a good excuse for the courts. It is not a very
good one for political scientists.
Ultimately, the disjunction between the necessarily narrow and
linear focus of the Voting Rights Act and the broader problem of
creating a functional and just polity demands a new generation of
thinking. The discussion in these essays comes tantalizingly
close at times to an in depth discussion of this issue. There are
mentions of alternative methods of providing equal power to
minorities in selecting representatives, such as proportional
representation. The potential problem of political isolation of
minorities in their safe districts is raised by Lani Guinier, but
the debate over this problem with Grofman is not thoroughly
debated.
"The Law" really is not the problem. It never set out
to cure all our problems. As James Turner asserts, "It does
not perceive any requirement... that adopts or promotes one
theory of democratic representation over another." While we
might protest that blind law can nonetheless move in one
direction, and that this one has, that also begs the question of
how to ensure nondiscriminatory treatment for minorities in the
electoral process and to meet the challenge
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Guinier presents of creating a fair and legitimate political
process.
Representation is a process, not an act. The electoral system and
the scheme of representation are essential elements of that
process. They affect other aspects, such as legitimacy, the
ability to deliberate and resolve conflict, and the
accountability of government. They also influence the way in
which other mediating institutions -- the party system and groups
-- function. It is these organic relationships that we often
neglect in our focus on the mechanics. Yet, I see no way to
induce new thinking about the organic character of democracy
without tools that force us to deal with the mechanics.
Ultimately, this may be the greatest of all the accomplishments
of the Voting Rights Act. If we do not like its second order
results, we will have to do something about them. As we start
that task, this book will help us understand both the promise and
the limits of legislation and litigation in improving the
process. It makes us think not only about the current
controversies, but of others that may be next on the agenda of
equal rights.
Copyright 1992