Justice Stevens’s Thoughts on Shelby county

Justice Stevens has not been shy in his retirement about telling us what he thinks about current controversies at the Supreme Court. In an essay at the New York Review of Books (reviewing Gary May, Bending Toward Justice), he discusses the Court’s decision in Shelby County.

I found this passage the most interesting:

The statistics set forth in Roberts’s recent opinion persuasively explain why a neutral decision-maker could reasonably conclude that at long last the imposition of the preclearance requirement on the states that lost the Civil War — or more precisely continuing to use the formula that in 1965 identified those states — is not justified by the conditions that prevail today.

Of course, the next sentence is:

The opinion fails, however, to explain why such a decision should be made by the members of the Supreme Court.

[UPDATE: And here are some thoughts from Josh Blackman, the internet’s biggest critic of the “Justice Stevens Rehabilitation Tour.”]

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