Legal Research on May 4th Session 1

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Matter
- Gingles
Case
- Thornburg v. Gingles
U.S. state
- North Carolina
Collection
- Case Files
Taxonomy
Identifier
- 8e593e2c-e192-ee11-be37-6045bdeb8873

Cite this item

Case Files, Thornburg v. Gingles Working Files - Guinier. Legal Research on May 4th Session 1, 1982. 8e593e2c-e192-ee11-be37-6045bdeb8873. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/1044d0c2-68ed-4456-a34b-f6dcfaf54f7d/legal-research-on-may-4th-session-1. Accessed November 02, 2025.

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OFFICE or THE ArroaNEY GENERAL,
Washington, D.C., May 4, 1982.

ion. STROM THUBMOND,
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary,
US. Senate, Washington, D.C'.

DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you for your inquiry concerning the compromise
language proposed for Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

In testimony before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Senate
Judiciary Committee earlier this year, I praised the Voting Rights Act as “the
centerpiece of those legal protections that guard against denials or abridgments
of the right to vote” and urged the Congress to extend the vital protections of the
Act for an additional and unprecedented ten-year period. These views were sub-
sequently echoed in testimony by William Bradford Reynolds, Assistant Attorney
General for the Civil Rights Division. At the same time, both I and Assistant
Attorney General Reynolds expressed strong reservations about a House-passed
amendment to Section 2 of the Act, which would eliminate the existing require-
ment of proving discriminatory intent and replace it with a standard of proof
based solely on “results.” Our principal concern—shared by many respected legal
scholars, members of Congress and others—was that adoption of the vaguely
worded “results" test in the House bill would invite a statistical analysis under
Section 2 of the Act and thus call into question the validity of any election sys
tem in the country under which candidates backed by the minority community
were not elected in numbers equal to the group's proportion of the total popula-
tion. Such a system of proportional representation strikes at the heart of our
Nation's commitment to traditional principles of popular sovereignty and repre-
sentative democracy.

“'e are pleased that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee considering
the issue recognized the seriousness of this concern. During the course of con-
sideration of the Voting Rights Act it became clear that no legislator intended to
Act to be interpreted as requiring a system of proportional representation.
Accordingly, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee developed the
bipartisan compromise amendment to Section 2 in order to preclude any such
interpretation.

The Department has reviewed and analyzed the compromise language pro-
posed for Section 2 of the Act. and we believe that the express provisions of the
compromise amendment foreclose the possibiilty of an interpretation requiring
proportional representation. In addition we are pleased that the members of
the Senate Judiciary Committee have returned the emphasis of the Voting Rights
Act to its proper focus on equal access to the political process and away from
an undue emphasis on the results of any particular election. In our view this
is far more faithful to the protections accorded all individuals under the Fif-
teenth Amendment. Accordingly, the Department supports the compromise amend-
ment to Section 2.

We applaud this sincere bipartisan eﬁort to address the Department's con-
cerns regarding Section 2 of the House-passed amendment to the Voting Rights
Act, and urge the full endorsement of the compromise amendment to Section 2
by both Houses of Congress.

Sincerely,

WILLIAM FRENCH SMITH,
Attorney General. .

asH

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Legal Research on May 4th Session 1

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U.S. state

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Identifier

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