J. Douglas Smith, “On Democracy’s Doorstep” (Hill and Wang, 2014)

New Books in Law · Feb 20, 2015 · 1h 8m

This year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, a legal revolution with far-reaching cultural, political, and economic import. But as J. Douglas Smith argues in On Democracy’s Doorstep: The Inside Story of How the Supreme Court Brought “One Person, One Vote” to the United States (Hill and Wang, 2014),the early 1960s witnessed a comparable sea change in voting law that deserves far more attention. Indeed, when journalists asked Earl Warren what he regarded as the Supreme Court’s most important accomplishment under his tenure, the Chief Justice — who oversaw a series…