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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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(8/5/00 Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper)
by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
The November elections will determine the scope of American justice for a generation. African Americans even more so than other Americans have much to gain and even more to lose.
In The Republic, Plato's classic analysis of just societies, Socrates posed a question every American should take to heart. "Who shall guard the guardians of justice?"
In our Republic, Supreme Court Justices and other federal judges are nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serve for life. As President Clinton predicted during his recent NAACP address, the next President will appoint between two and four Supreme Court Justices, as well as more than 20 Courts of Appeals judges and over 100 federal district court judges.
When they addressed the NAACP, the differences between what Al Gore and George W. Bush would require of future Supreme Court nominees were quite evident.
"The true test," Vice President Gore declared, "is to come here to Baltimore and vow to appoint a Supreme Court that lives up to the legacy of this city's greatest son, Thurgood Marshall, and interprets the Constitution in the way our founders intended it to be interpreted, not to give a commitment to the far right wing to stack that Court, because stacking the Court would threaten civil rights and threaten the fundamental guarantees of liberty in this country."
In sharp contrast, Governor Bush failed even to mention his criteria for Supreme Court nominees, despite our apparent interest in that information. From earlier statements to the Associated Press, however, we know that Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are the two Supreme Court Justices whom Governor Bush most admires.
A presidential vote for George W. Bush, therefore, would virtually guarantee the appointment of between two and four more Supreme Court Justices in the Thomas/Scalia mold.
What would a Bush presidency mean for the justice we can expect as African Americans?
Last January, Justices Scalia and Thomas led a 5-4 Supreme Court majority in the Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board case that prohibited the Justice Department from intervening to assure fair African American participation in the choice of their Louisiana school board. The men whom Governor Bush favors as model guardians of justice declared that unless a voting plan would make things even worse for African Americans than they are now the Justice Department may not act to protect against discriminatory attempts to dilute our voting strength.
The Regan/Bush appointees concluded that unless the purpose of a districting plan is "retrogressive" overwhelming evidence of a conscious, racially-based purpose to dilute minority voting strength is irrelevant. In his dissent, however, Justice Souter pointed out that the applicable standard for challenging a discriminatory purpose to limit minority voting strength should be the voting power we deserve, based upon one person-one vote. I agree.
Restricting that standard to comparisons with our limited voting power in the past, as Justices Scalia and Thomas do, allows two wrongs to add up to a right a right to discriminate.
As Justice Thurgood Marshall insightfully declared in Beer v. United States, "the Court dilutes the meaning of unconstitutionality in this context to the point that the congressional purposes in Section 5 are no longer served and sacred guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment emerge badly battered."
On July 26, I joined Congressman Mel Watt of North Carolina in introducing "The Voting Rights Clarification Act of 2000," legislation that would restore the Justice Department's ability to prevent discriminatory voting plans from going into effect.
Realistically, passage will depend upon the American voters in November.
Will America elect a President and Congress who will restore the Justice Department's power to protect us under the Voting Rights Act? Will we elect a President and Senate who will appoint to the Supreme Court true guardians of justice like Thurgood Marshall and David Souter?
President Clinton has accurately observed, "The face of injustice . . . is indifference, or worse." That is why we must assert the full measure of our citizenship on November 7 so that our courts will once again guard all Americans against injustice.
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.
