My apologies if this has been diaried before, I'm posting on the fly.
Frederick Clarkson diaried Deval Patrick's rousing speech given for the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act but
Massachusetts blogger Michael Forbes Wilcox picked up on this newsworthy point :
Back when he was working for the Reagan Administration as a young lawyer, John Roberts fought provisions of the Voting Rights Act, squaring off against the young Deval Patrick who was then a lawyer for the NAACP.
White lawyer vs. Voting Rights Act
Black lawyer for expanding voting rights for minorities.
How ugly. Could things been any more stark ?
( cross posted at My Left Wing )
Now, John Roberts' track record established working for the Reagan Administration is a bit on the ugly side...
[ Via Newseek ]Much of Roberts's time at the Justice Department was taken up by the debate over GOP-sponsored bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases.
But the clash of two young lawyers, John Roberts vs. Deval Patrick, makes things even more stark.
[ Via Michael Forbes Wilcox ] Deval Patrick was billed as the Keynote Speaker at a recent (August 3) "Teach-in" at the Massachusetts State House.
The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (which was actually August 6).
Mr. Patrick spoke eloquently of the importance and the history of this landmark legislation, and the role he had in helping defend it as a young lawyer working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I was struck by the contrast to what I had just read about the work done around this issue by another lawyer, of about the same age, who was working on the other side of the road. [see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8719622/ and http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/politics/politicsspecial1/04roberts.html e.g.]
John Roberts, the current nominee for a Supreme Court seat, was working to quash renewal of certain provisions of the Act, and also to defeat a proposed new provision (a response to an unfavorable Supreme Court interpretation). The new provision would make it explicit that discrimination occurred when voting rights were denied, with no burden of proof that the denial was intentional. As Vernon Jordan had declared in a NY Times Op-Ed piece, "Intent to discriminate is impossible to prove." Roberts was keen on fighting back, and drafted a response for AG William French Smith, warning that the bill would "gradually lead to a system of proportional representation based on race or minority language status."
Heaven forfend that minorities should be represented in proportion to their numbers!"
"And so what is the lesson of the civil rights struggle? What is the perspective without which America has no hope of becoming what she has dedicated herself to become? That civil rights today is, as it has always been, a struggle for the American conscience." - Deval Patrick