Legal Commentary

Snapshot

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Only 43 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the United States has elected a black man as President.

As is often the case for a trail-blazer, he had to be twice as good as the other candidate for the job.

Progressive candidates also won a number of important victories around the country — they did not sweep the table, and did particularly poorly in South Florida, but won enough nationwide to claim a substantial mandate nonetheless.

I would take even more pleasure from all this were it not tempered by the enshrinement in law of a different bigotry: although not all the votes are counted it seems that Amendment 2 passed in Florida, with more than 62% of the vote (60% was required); similarly, California’s Proposition 8 seems to have passed narrowly also. Enshrining discrimination in state constitutions is not what makes a country great.

We will come to regret these votes, and to see them as the same sort of stain as we now know Jim Crow to have been. The only question is when.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on November 05, 2008 (boomark / email).