Word: guinier
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...presentation of Guinier's own arguments directly after the quoted views of her critics drives home Stephen Carter's point that "many of the reporters who covered the Guinier story did not bother to read the scholarship about which they were writing...". In proof of this, an entire essay is devoted to the case against quotas, or what the author terms "tokenism." Here she argues persuasively that focusing on the number of Black representatives elected replaces political with electoral outcomes as the major cause for concern. For example, "one Black elected official proportionately represented on a small city council operating...
This, among other points, leads Guinier to propose the solution of "cumulative voting." Under this system, a single representative would on longer be tied directly to a particular geographical area. Instead, an expanded constituency would elect a number of representatives, each member of the electorate possessing the same number of votes as there were spaces to fill. such a change would, in Guinier's opinion, allow minority groups to block their votes together in order to elect a genuinely 'representative' candidate. It would also force incumbents into a more direct accountability to their constituents as, since re-election now depends...
This proposal is where Guinier is genuinely controversial, as it could be, (and was) forcefully argued, that cumulative voting the assumption of a "a preexisting general, common, uniform perspective or cultural understanding," which we do not have, and have never had. But even had Guinier been permitted to take up the position to which she was appointed, the power actually to affect such systemic change would never have been hers. The power she would have had, however, would have been to awaken the public to the idea that dominatesThe Tyranny of the Majority."Voting is not just about winning elections...
...there is one criticism of this book it is that its framing as a vindication of Guinier's qualification for the role from which she was debarred detracts from the interest and complexity of her arguments themselves. The unfairness of her treatment is so obvious from the introduction and foreword that her Law Review articles themselves begin to seem like a rather unwieldy piece of evidence, rather than the main substance of the book. This problem is reinforced by the fact that, although the articles have been adapted for re-publication and each is prefaced by a note of explanation...
Despite this,The Tyranny of the Majorityremains both a testimony to Guinier's innovation in the face of the problems of minority representation she describes, and a caution against the complaceny demonstrated by officials such as Justice O'Connor. It therefore seems appropriate to finish with a statement from her own Epilogue...