Deconstructing the Republic: Voting Rights, the Supreme Court, and the Founders’ Republicanism Reconsidered

Abstract

In this book, Anthony Peacock, who teaches political science at Utah State University, explores political and legal interpretations of the Voting Rights Acts (VRA) which encourage a kind of multiculturalism or identity politics that he considers destructive to the Founders’ constitutional vision. Thus, the book functions at two levels. First, it is a very useful overview of the implementation of the VRA which was extended by Congress in 2006 for another 25 years. Second, it is a provocative argument about the kind of voting arrangements Peacock believes are consistent with Madisonian Republicanism and the role of the VRA in undermining them. He concludes: “The Founders hoped that the various institutional processes of the national government would involve reasoning on the merits of legislative proposals with a view to protecting individual rights and promoting the general welfare. . . The current VRA – the VRA of second-generation voting rights – requires legislators, judges, and administrators to think in racial terms, to count in racial terms, and to allocate political power in racial terms”