Legal Research on May 4th Session 1

Document text

The following text has been generated automatically during the document scanning process. It may contain errors, omissions, or incorrect formatting. Please refer to the PDF document if this text is not usable.

Download

By downloading, publishing, or reusing the Materials outside of the Website, you hereby confirm and attest that you have read and agree to the LDF Archival Collection Terms of Use linked below. We draw your attention to the following:

For those Materials owned by LDF, your use of the Material outside the Site is solely for one or more of the following (the “Permitted Purposes”):

Non-commercial research and private study;
Teaching, scholarship and instruction (including distance learning);
Non-commercial print and non-commercial online use;
Criticism, comment or news reporting; or
For people with visual disabilities (See Section 121 of the Copyright Act).
For those Materials not owned by LDF you understand that:
- It is your responsibility to determine whether the way you plan to use the materials falls within the copyright exception of Fair Use.
- For any use outside of Fair Use, it is your responsibility to seek and obtain all required permissions from any existing rights holders.

LDF hereby grants you the right to use LDF owned Materials for the Permitted Purposes without seeking further permission from LDF.

If you publish or redistribute any Materials (including excerpts and quotes), you must include a credit line and/or proper citation to the source of the Material. However, you may not use the name of LDF in any manner which creates any false association between you and LDF or that incorrectly implies any sponsorship or endorsement of you by LDF.

NOTICE: Uses that do not comply with these Terms or that do not fall under Fair Use (or another exception) may make you liable for copyright infringement.

Read the full LDF Archival Collection Terms of Use Here.

I agree to the terms and conditions for use of this content.

If you would like to use this content in other ways, contact us at

LDF Attorneys
Cooperating Attorney
- Leslie J. Winner
Organization
- NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Fund, Inc.
Matter
- Gingles
Case
- Thornburg v. Gingles
U.S. state
- North Carolina
Collection
- Case Files
Creator
- Lani Guinier
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 July 06, 2025.

Copied!

    S/AJW

57m Seam, ,4]: ’C/

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

Copyright notice

This collection and the tools to navigate it (the “Collection”) are available to the public for general educational and research purposes, as well as to preserve and contextualize the history of the content and materials it contains (the “Materials”). Like other archival collections, such as those found in libraries, LDF owns the physical source Materials that have been digitized for the Collection; however, LDF does not own the underlying copyright or other rights in all items and there are limits on how you can use the Materials. By accessing and using the Material, you acknowledge your agreement to the Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Materials.

Additional info

To the extent that LDF includes information about the Materials’ origins or ownership or provides summaries or transcripts of original source Materials, LDF does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy of such information, transcripts or summaries, and shall not be responsible for any inaccuracies.

Legal Research on May 4th Session 1

LDF Attorneys

Cooperating Attorney

Organization

Matter

Case

U.S. state

Collection

Creator

Taxonomy

Identifier

Cite this item

Copyright notice

Additional info

You may also be interested in