How Manchin and Sinema Completed a Conservative Vision
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Roberts as much as anyone set in motion the events that have led to this weeks climactic Senate confrontation over voting legislation. In a series of rulings over the past 15 years, the Supreme Court, often in decisions written by Roberts himself, has consistently weakened federal oversight of voter protections and struck down federal regulations meant to reduce the influence of money in politics. Almost all of those decisions have unfolded on a strict party-line basis, with the Republican-appointed justices outvoting those appointed by Democrats.
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Roberts, who served as a young clerk to conservative Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist and as a Justice Department assistant in the Reagan administration, has long expressed hostility to federal oversight of voting and election rules. As the journalist Ari Berman recounted in his 2015 book, Give Us the Ballot, Roberts led the charge against the bipartisan 1982 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, which ultimately reversed a Supreme Court decision (supported by Rehnquist) weakening one key section of the law. Roberts wrote upwards of 25 memos opposing the legislations provision requiring that the Justice Department prove only discriminatory effect rather than purposeful intent in order to block state or local voting restrictions. (The Court had ruled the opposite, severely limiting the laws applicability.)
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Roberts has often appeared reluctant to let the Court be seen in purely partisan terms. But that instinct, as many critics have noted, has not extended to cases involving the core electoral interests of the two political partiescases in which hes been entirely willing to engineer sharply divided rulings that separate the justices along partisan and ideological lines. (No Democratic-appointed justice has supported any of these rulings.)
Theres no consistent explanation that can account for Robertss rulings in election-law cases other than just a partisan motive, Stephanopoulos, echoing the view of many critics, told me. Intervene when its restrictions on money in politics; dont intervene when its partisan gerrymandering or voting restrictions. Intervene again when its Congress trying to do something about racial vote suppression or racial vote dilution. Sometimes mention the Framers, sometimes dont mention the Framers. Its anything goes as long as the final outcome is the preferred partisan outcome.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/01/manchin-sinema-filibuster-voting-rights/621271/