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The DOJ and Civil Rights Enforcement

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It’s obviously good news that the Voting Rights Act will be renewed. But it’s also worth remembering that civil rights legislation is only as good as the willingness of the executive branch to enforce it. Alas, the DOJ continues its ongoing quest to pack the department with unqualified partisan hacks. And as a result, the DOJ is pursuing such crucial civil rights issues as making sure that universities drop minority fellowships. (Make sure to Read the Whole Thing.)

This is one of the most important ways in which elections matter; when it comes to the statutes of the modern regulatory state, a great deal of policy-making power inheres in the executive (and judiciary), and can offer produce very different outcomes even as the language on the books remains the same. As Michael Tomasky said a couple years ago, “In every agency of government, at every level, there are political appointees who are interpreting federal rules and regulations and deciding how much effort will really be put into pursuing federal discrimination cases, for instance, or illegal toxic dumping. These are the people who are, in fact, the federal government. The kinds of people who fill those slots in a Democratic administration are of a very different stripe than the kinds who fill them during a Republican term, and the appointments of these people have a bigger effect on real life than whether Al Gore sighs too heavily or speaks too slowly.”

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