Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news. I'm Noah Feldman. John Lewis, the civil rights icon and congressman, died last week at the age of eighty. He is known, among many other things, for being one of the leaders of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March in nineteen sixty five. On March seventh of that year, a day now known as Bloody Sunday, Lewis and other marchers were attacked by armed police on the Edmund Pettis Bridge, an event that helped spur Lyndon Johnson into signing the Voting Rights Act. Lewis then went on to have a long and storied career in Congress, representing the fifth District of Orgia, which included a great deal of Atlanta for seventeen congressional terms, and always continuing to fight for voting rights and embodying the tradition and spirit of the civil rights movement. Here he is just a few years ago, speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives about expanding voting rights protections. In my hearts the heart, I believe that we should make it simple and convenient for all of our citizens to be part of the democratic process. It should not matter well you're black, a white, Latino, Asian, American, Native American. We should be able to participate in a democratic process. To discuss John Lewis's legacy and voting rights as they exist today, we are joined by Debo Adegbila. Debo twice defended the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court during his long career with the nuble ACP Legal Defense Fund. Today, he's a commissioner on the US Commission on Civil Rights, a position to which he was appointed by President Barack Obama, and he's a partner at the law firm Wilmer Hale Deboth. Thank you so much for joining me. I want to begin with a reminder for listeners of just how central the career of Congressman John Lewis was to the development of civil rights, and especially voting rights in the United States. He was chairman of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. He was one of the original thirteen Freedom Writers. He was one of the organizers of the March on Washington. When you think of his legacy, what elements stand out most for you in terms of his inspiration When I think of John Lewis, I think first of his exhortation to his fellow Americans that you have to be prepared to put yourself in the way to achieve justice. Is literally somebody who, from the time he was a teenager until his old days, was prepared to advance the cause of the disenfranchised by literally putting himself on the front lines of the public conversation, demonstrations, and issues of the day. He was fearless, a fearless advocate for justice, and he was motivated by an inner sense of moral courage that made him unbowed even in the face of risks to his life and well being. And that example of an unyielding commitment to the notion that America can be better tomorrow than it is today if we work at it is something that all of us should aspire to. There's something particularly extraordinary about the way that John Lewis, literally, as you were saying, put his body in the way of harm. And although he wasn't a murder like Martin Luther King Jr. He was very very badly injured on more than one occasion. That example, I think, is something the power of which will never ever become old. It's an example of moral courage that we should always return to that I believe future generations will return to. We know in so many ways we train people to be on the front lines. There are soldiers who are trained to be on the front lines. There is law enforcement that is trained to be on the front lines. These people we provide with weapons, and sometimes under the sanction of the flag or under state organized authority, have the right to defend themselves with deadly force and take people's lives. In contrast, the civil rights marchers and John Lewis, they had only the strength of their convictions and the understanding that they were on the right side of history, and they presented themselves without weapons, but only with the force of their commitment to justice, and they did so in the face of brutal forces on the other side. Lewis was a deeply believing and committed Christian and had a calling to be a minister already when he was a boy, and trained then as a minister. Talk a little bit about how that kind of religious faith and religious center was so important to the moral message that he brought eventually to the country. I'm so glad that you've asked that Noah, because I do think that the religious grounding that John Lewis had was part of the transcendence with which he approached his life on earth. That is to say, he organized his life around the concept that there were things that were more important and perhaps a more meaningful willing to sacrifice your life if need be, because there was some moral imperative that was greater than the individual being. And I think that this is something that derives from many religious traditions, the sense of humanity perhaps rising above the cause of the individual. And I think it was part of this commitment that led him to understand that his work on earth was dedicated to being that of a servant, but he was in service of something that was bigger than his own individual needs and commitments. He was in service of the common humanity and dignity of all human beings, and I think that was what made him willing to put himself in harm's way. I think a lot about our American civic religion. You know, we have formal separation of church and state in our country, and we have a First Amendment with a free exercise clause and establishment clause, but we also have collective beliefs and values about who we are that are in some important ways connected to our collective conception of the divine. Even if one is not a Christian, as I indeed him not, I think it's possible to still appreciate and recognize the Christian component in our collective civic religion, which tries to be universal in a certain respect, but is also in certain ways inflected by Christian tradition. And I think here especially of sacrifice and of the willingness to sacrifice. And this connects up to the point that you made about John Lewis being prepared to give his body. That's a deeply Christian idea, one that is then transmuted, I think in our civil rights tradition into the idea of people for the Constitution and for the values of the Constitution and of equality and of equal justice being able to sacrifice their bodies. I wonder if you think that that resonance matters the specifically Christian side of what then becomes a more universal American civic religion. I believe it does matter. It matters to a lot of people, and I think people may connect to the message or the symbolism in different ways, depending upon the extent to which they follow the Christian tradition or theology. But for those who are thinking about the Christian traditions and the fact that Christ bled and the Lord sacrificed his son on a cross so that others may go forward and learn from the example of sacrifice. And when you think about John Lewis and the others who bled on a bridge, laid their bodies down, and John Lewis used to say when he gave speeches recalling his work and his march with the other brave, nonviolent marchers on the Edmond Pettis Bridge, he used to say, I shed a little blood for the cause and for voting rights. I shed a little blood on that bridge. And so there is certainly a parallel in giving of the flesh and the body on earth in support of something that is higher and that has greater moral force and transcendence. And so I think that those who attend to Christian teachings can see a deep residence. But I like your point also about the American civic religion as I think you called it, or civic engagement, which means that whether you view the work and the effort through a theological lens or through a different democracy lens about we the people and what it means to be engaged in the construction of a civic religion, that is about the common aspiration of a people who recognize that we can be better if we work at it. And I think that that was also part of John Lewis's Snicks Southern Christian Leadership Conferences as the NAACP le ACP Legal Defense Fund that was also part of it. They took the words of building a more perfect union. Seriously, there was something that was aspirational in the founding vision, not that we come as a perfect nation, but that if we the people work at it, we can become a better nation. And perhaps that is the heart of the civic religion, if you will, of American democracy. Let's turn a little bit to the question of voting, which has been one of the central focuses of your career as a civil rights advocate, and which was of course so close to the center of Lewis's career and life. When you think about the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, what do you think its core promise was meant to be? I regard Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, as a national commitment to a minority inclusion principle in our democracy. That is to say that for the full sweep of American history, many people in our society, African Americans, Latin X people, people in parts of the country were excluded from the most basic principle of a democracy, which is to participate in self governance. And that exclusion happened on account of race and discrimination that was state sponsored and enforced by state authorities at the barrel of a gun, and or mob violence. And what happened on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and was followed closely by President Lyndon Johnson's speech before a joint session of Congress. It was a moment in which the gap between our promises of equal protection of the laws and the practices on the ground of exclusion and segregation was being intentionally narrowed in a way that would change the nation. I view the effort at civil rights as an effort to narrow the gap between our high civic promises and constitutional promises and what are too often low practices. John Lewis and his brothers and sisters who joined him on that bridge, and those who gave their lives before and after that march. Many people may not remember that the march itself was occasion because of military veteran Jimmy Lee Jackson was killed in an earlier voting march by a state trooper or police official in Alabama, and his colleagues were so upset that Imi Lee Jackson had been killed defending his grandmother and mother at a peaceful voting march that Josea Williams said, we should take Jimmy Lee Jackson's coffin and we should march it all the way to Montgomery, the point being that we should put the body of sacrifice of our brothers and sisters and lay it bare and expose it before the nation so that the world can see what we are prepared to give, what we are in fact giving in service of equality, and that to me is the heart of the Voting Rights Act. It was a national commitment that said we are going to use the power of the federal government and of state authority not only to subjugate, and not to turn a blind eye while state government subjugate, but to elevate the voices of democratic participation in the polity and to stand for a minority inclusion principle that we cannot turn back from. That's how I regard the voting rights. We'll be right back. The minority inclusion principle that you're talking about ended up being embodied in different parts of the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, but one of the most important components was a practical process called preclearance, according to which if you're in a part of the country with a history, a demonstrated history of race based voting exclusion, before you can change the way that you district and assign voters to different districts, which of course is crucial to how voting outcomes are produced, you had to go to the Department of Justice and get the Department of Justice to review your plan, and then very probably you'd have to go to a court and get the court as well to have a look at that plan before you could make a chance. That practice, which remained in place from nineteen sixty five and was then renewed by Congress a couple of times, came under attack in a very important voting rights case, landmark case called Shelby County against Holder that the Supreme Court decided in twenty thirteen, and you were one of the people who argued that case before the Supreme Court while working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, tell us about what that experience was like, and then through that maybe tell us about how the case came out and what you feel about it. Absolutely, so, Shelby County, I believe is rightfully regarded as one of the most significant civil rights cases of this generation. Unfortunately, and I will begin at the end, it stands in some ways for the proposition not only that a particularly effective piece of the Voting Rights Act has been rendered inoperable, the preclearance provision of which you spoke, but also the case stands for the proposition that there was a signal that the country was again in retreat and stepping away from the minority inclusion principle that had been so central to our march toward justice and our march toward freedom. And so Shelby County presented those issues. Essentially, the question before the court, not the technical legal question, but the question that I think people should understand was before the Court is the fact that we have made progress in large measure because we have had protections in place, and because we turned away from a system of exclusion and discrimination to a system of minority inclusion. Is the fact of that progress evidence that we should abandon our effort to continue to perfect the union to make more progress? Right? Essentially, there were two roads that were diverging as the Court was presented with Shelby County. Should the improvement that we have seen from the time of nineteen sixty five until twenty thirteen. Should that leave us in the position that there's enough progress and when we can step away? Or must we continue to follow consistent with the judgment of Congress, including a unanimous United States Senate that voted ninety eight zero in support of the reauthorization of the preclarance provisions of the Voting Rights Act? Should we continue to do more to do better to perfect the Union? As I walked in the courtroom to argue the Shelby County case, it was the second time that I had defended these provisions of the Voting Rights Act before the United States Supreme Court. The Northwest Austin case presented a very similar question. It's my understanding that the first Supreme Court argument that John Lewis ever attended was the Northwest Austin case. He was there again on the day of the Shelby County argument, to witness the defense of the statute that he literally had given blood for, and that he knew people who had died for. He wanted to be present. He wanted to bear witness, to see our government at work, and to stand again on the front lines of the fight for equality, and to be in the courtroom. It was a weighty responsibility. I said of the earlier case that it was humbling, exhilarating, and terrifying all at once. All of those emotions are coursing through your body as you rise to the podium in some ways, to try and speak what many people regard as a self evident truth to power that discrimination continues in America, and that voting discrimination continues, and that the protections that Congress had committed to over a long period of time remained important and were doing vital work. That was the self evident truth. In some ways, you feel as if you and your presentation is trying to prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. It is that self evident. And it was difficult to be there and to see the extent to which even during the oral argument, the Court was signaling that it was going to cast aside under our constitutional system, the judgment of the Congress, and I think we have seen on the backside what has happened in the wake of Shelby County. That is, those things that were self evident have proven to be true, and that many are taking the signal that the federal government is in retreat from minority voter protection and those who wish to win elections through nefarious means are trying to have their way. The day that the case came down, I remember very vividly sitting at my computer doing what I always do in the Supreme Court decides it's big cases, you know, they come down, I get them on the computer. I read them as fast as I humanly can. Then I sit down and I write something for my my column about it. And my opening line that day was the Civil Rights era ended. Today. I wonder, looking back at this in retrospect, if I overstated the case in your view. What I meant, of course, was that symbolically, the Voting Rights Act was at the very core of the civil rights movement, and because it had been renewed by Congress, Congress had maintained the momentum in some sense of the civil rights movement, even in the face of conservative opposition to it sometimes and that the Supreme Court, by this extreme activist decision, was blocking the progress of the civil rights movement. When you look back at it from a distance of now just a little more than seven years, and you think about the consequences of that decision, do you feel as though the civil rights movement was in some important ways stymied or blocked, or do you think that there have been creative ways for activists and others to try to continue to press for voting rights notwithstanding the great limit that the Court placed on this extraordinary tool, the Voting Rights Act. It's an important question, Noah, and I think for the answer, I am reminded of the work of Alexander Kasar. Alex Kasar wrote an important book about the history of the right to vote, and one of the central tenants of Professor Kaisar's book is that there is a dominant and somewhat ubiquitous understanding or theory out there that America and American democracy has been on a path of unidirectional progress. That is to say, that things always get better, we're always improving, and things are always moving forward. What case are, among other things, added to the conversation is that when you look at the story of voting in America, what you see is not a pattern of unidirectional progress, of a march that is ever forward. But what you see is a history of ebbs and flows, concerted efforts to push and expand the reach of the franchise, and then reactions against those pushes for greater democratic inclusion, and rearguard efforts that push back and try and limit the franchise. And so, because I had the understanding of the nature of the struggle for voting rights, perhaps for civil rights more broadly, that it's action and reaction, that it's not just a unidirectional march forward, I understood that Shelby County was a very disappointing and important mark on the course of civil rights and voting history, but would not be the final word, would not be the end of the nation's quest for civil rights, but was perhaps the end of a chapter that signaled that there were gathering clouds ahead, and that there were difficult days ahead, but that those of us who remain, like John Lewis, undaunted in the face of long odds, would continue to put our shoulder against the Boulder and push for greater inclusion and to try and move the country forward again. So I bring that understanding to the fight for civil rights, that sometimes it's faced with setbacks, and that what's important is to be unyielding in the face of those setbacks and to push and demand more. You yourself have had an extraordinary career fighting those setbacks and trying to be an advocate for and being an advocate for civil rights. I know you went to Connecticut College, where my brother teaches in the philosophy department, a college that is an amazing place. Then you went to ny U Law School, where I myself started my academic career, and then you worked for many years CPLDF and then had various responsibilities and positions in the Obama administration, and then working at the Senate as well, and now you're a Commissioner of the US Commission on Civil Rights. When you think about what you can do going forward, and you're still very young man, when you think about the next phase of your own life and connect that to the cause of civil rights, what strikes you as the biggest challenges and where would you like to be able to make contributions in the next phase of your own professional life. Thank you for that question. And I think about the fights for educational opportunity and the inequities that we see both in K through twelve education and in higher education, and how important education is as being a tool in some sort of civic transcendence. It is a pathway to opportunity. I think, of course, about the issues of criminal justice and the relationship between minority communities and law enforcement across the nation. I think about the path that the nation has walked of increasingly militaristic policing tactics, but the opportunity and the possibility that is there to revisit the relationship between law enforcement and minority communities and all communities. I remain committed to the idea that there is a way to align our democratic institutions where we are not fearing the differences that exist in our society, but are regarding them as a strength that we can commit to and lift up voices in service of the common idea that we share that we are stronger together than we are when we curry divisiveness in the people. And so I hope to try and use the remaining days that I have not feeling as much of a young man as I once was, but hopefully there are some more miles on the odometer to continue to work at these things in large and small ways. And the last thing that I would say on this point, because it's such an important question you've asked, is that John Lewis understood that he was able to be a catalyst for change. He was able to put himself on the front lines, but he was also able to recognize that there were generations of people that were coming behind him, and that their voices and contributions and ideas were no less valuable than what his contributions had been in his day. And so one of the ways that I have tried to carry forward the lessons of the civil rights movement is that piece of transcendence that when people are coming together for collective aims, you should not feel that any leader or any one person as all the right ideas or has the single path to improve things. You have to make space for those who come from different places and at different times to try and advance the ideal of perfecting the union. I want to thank you for reflecting on the legacy of John Lewis so thoughtfully, and also for picking up his torch and carrying it in your own career, and for helping guide us in that direction going forward. I'm really really grateful, not just for the conversation but the work that you've been doing. Thank you all the best, Take care. Talking to Dabo about the legacy of John Lewis is a powerful reminder that we all deserve to feel some pride in being citizens of a country that could produce an extraordinary person like John Lewis, but also that we bear responsibility as citizens to try to continue the fight that John Lewis had to pursue in order to try to achieve equal rights for all Americans. Our legacy is a complicated and mixed one. The history of racism is not merely in the past, but continues into the present. The struggle for civil rights is not over. People like Dabo are continuing to fight it, but that's not enough anymore than it was enough for John Lewis to do so. Dabo reminds us that we all have to continue in that challenge, and that ultimately, if we want to oversee and supervise all of the forces of our government, including the police, we need to do it via democracy. That means we need to speak, We need to think, we need to vote. Until the next time I speak to you, be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Jane Cott, with mastering by Jason Gambrell and Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner is Sophia mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. I also write a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash Podcasts. And one last thing. I just wrote a book called The Arab Winter, a Tragedy. I would be delighted if you checked it out. If you liked what you heard today, please write a review or tell a friend. You can always let me know what you think on Twitter. My handle is Noah R. Feldman. This is Deep Background.

Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news. I'm Noah Feldman. John Lewis, the civil rights icon and congressman, died last week at the age of eighty. He is known, among many other things, for being one of the leaders of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March in nineteen sixty five. On March seventh of that year, a day now known as Bloody Sunday, Lewis and other marchers were attacked by armed police on the Edmund Pettis Bridge, an event that helped spur Lyndon Johnson into signing the Voting Rights Act. Lewis then went on to have a long and storied career in Congress, representing the fifth District of Orgia, which included a great deal of Atlanta for seventeen congressional terms, and always continuing to fight for voting rights and embodying the tradition and spirit of the civil rights movement. Here he is just a few years ago, speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives about expanding voting rights protections. In my hearts the heart, I believe that we should make it simple and convenient for all of our citizens to be part of the democratic process. It should not matter well you're black, a white, Latino, Asian, American, Native American. We should be able to participate in a democratic process. To discuss John Lewis's legacy and voting rights as they exist today, we are joined by Debo Adegbila. Debo twice defended the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court during his long career with the nuble ACP Legal Defense Fund. Today, he's a commissioner on the US Commission on Civil Rights, a position to which he was appointed by President Barack Obama, and he's a partner at the law firm Wilmer Hale Deboth. Thank you so much for joining me. I want to begin with a reminder for listeners of just how central the career of Congressman John Lewis was to the development of civil rights, and especially voting rights in the United States. He was chairman of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. He was one of the original thirteen Freedom Writers. He was one of the organizers of the March on Washington. When you think of his legacy, what elements stand out most for you in terms of his inspiration When I think of John Lewis, I think first of his exhortation to his fellow Americans that you have to be prepared to put yourself in the way to achieve justice. Is literally somebody who, from the time he was a teenager until his old days, was prepared to advance the cause of the disenfranchised by literally putting himself on the front lines of the public conversation, demonstrations, and issues of the day. He was fearless, a fearless advocate for justice, and he was motivated by an inner sense of moral courage that made him unbowed even in the face of risks to his life and well being. And that example of an unyielding commitment to the notion that America can be better tomorrow than it is today if we work at it is something that all of us should aspire to. There's something particularly extraordinary about the way that John Lewis, literally, as you were saying, put his body in the way of harm. And although he wasn't a murder like Martin Luther King Jr. He was very very badly injured on more than one occasion. That example, I think, is something the power of which will never ever become old. It's an example of moral courage that we should always return to that I believe future generations will return to. We know in so many ways we train people to be on the front lines. There are soldiers who are trained to be on the front lines. There is law enforcement that is trained to be on the front lines. These people we provide with weapons, and sometimes under the sanction of the flag or under state organized authority, have the right to defend themselves with deadly force and take people's lives. In contrast, the civil rights marchers and John Lewis, they had only the strength of their convictions and the understanding that they were on the right side of history, and they presented themselves without weapons, but only with the force of their commitment to justice, and they did so in the face of brutal forces on the other side. Lewis was a deeply believing and committed Christian and had a calling to be a minister already when he was a boy, and trained then as a minister. Talk a little bit about how that kind of religious faith and religious center was so important to the moral message that he brought eventually to the country. I'm so glad that you've asked that Noah, because I do think that the religious grounding that John Lewis had was part of the transcendence with which he approached his life on earth. That is to say, he organized his life around the concept that there were things that were more important and perhaps a more meaningful willing to sacrifice your life if need be, because there was some moral imperative that was greater than the individual being. And I think that this is something that derives from many religious traditions, the sense of humanity perhaps rising above the cause of the individual. And I think it was part of this commitment that led him to understand that his work on earth was dedicated to being that of a servant, but he was in service of something that was bigger than his own individual needs and commitments. He was in service of the common humanity and dignity of all human beings, and I think that was what made him willing to put himself in harm's way. I think a lot about our American civic religion. You know, we have formal separation of church and state in our country, and we have a First Amendment with a free exercise clause and establishment clause, but we also have collective beliefs and values about who we are that are in some important ways connected to our collective conception of the divine. Even if one is not a Christian, as I indeed him not, I think it's possible to still appreciate and recognize the Christian component in our collective civic religion, which tries to be universal in a certain respect, but is also in certain ways inflected by Christian tradition. And I think here especially of sacrifice and of the willingness to sacrifice. And this connects up to the point that you made about John Lewis being prepared to give his body. That's a deeply Christian idea, one that is then transmuted, I think in our civil rights tradition into the idea of people for the Constitution and for the values of the Constitution and of equality and of equal justice being able to sacrifice their bodies. I wonder if you think that that resonance matters the specifically Christian side of what then becomes a more universal American civic religion. I believe it does matter. It matters to a lot of people, and I think people may connect to the message or the symbolism in different ways, depending upon the extent to which they follow the Christian tradition or theology. But for those who are thinking about the Christian traditions and the fact that Christ bled and the Lord sacrificed his son on a cross so that others may go forward and learn from the example of sacrifice. And when you think about John Lewis and the others who bled on a bridge, laid their bodies down, and John Lewis used to say when he gave speeches recalling his work and his march with the other brave, nonviolent marchers on the Edmond Pettis Bridge, he used to say, I shed a little blood for the cause and for voting rights. I shed a little blood on that bridge. And so there is certainly a parallel in giving of the flesh and the body on earth in support of something that is higher and that has greater moral force and transcendence. And so I think that those who attend to Christian teachings can see a deep residence. But I like your point also about the American civic religion as I think you called it, or civic engagement, which means that whether you view the work and the effort through a theological lens or through a different democracy lens about we the people and what it means to be engaged in the construction of a civic religion, that is about the common aspiration of a people who recognize that we can be better if we work at it. And I think that that was also part of John Lewis's Snicks Southern Christian Leadership Conferences as the NAACP le ACP Legal Defense Fund that was also part of it. They took the words of building a more perfect union. Seriously, there was something that was aspirational in the founding vision, not that we come as a perfect nation, but that if we the people work at it, we can become a better nation. And perhaps that is the heart of the civic religion, if you will, of American democracy. Let's turn a little bit to the question of voting, which has been one of the central focuses of your career as a civil rights advocate, and which was of course so close to the center of Lewis's career and life. When you think about the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, what do you think its core promise was meant to be? I regard Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, as a national commitment to a minority inclusion principle in our democracy. That is to say that for the full sweep of American history, many people in our society, African Americans, Latin X people, people in parts of the country were excluded from the most basic principle of a democracy, which is to participate in self governance. And that exclusion happened on account of race and discrimination that was state sponsored and enforced by state authorities at the barrel of a gun, and or mob violence. And what happened on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and was followed closely by President Lyndon Johnson's speech before a joint session of Congress. It was a moment in which the gap between our promises of equal protection of the laws and the practices on the ground of exclusion and segregation was being intentionally narrowed in a way that would change the nation. I view the effort at civil rights as an effort to narrow the gap between our high civic promises and constitutional promises and what are too often low practices. John Lewis and his brothers and sisters who joined him on that bridge, and those who gave their lives before and after that march. Many people may not remember that the march itself was occasion because of military veteran Jimmy Lee Jackson was killed in an earlier voting march by a state trooper or police official in Alabama, and his colleagues were so upset that Imi Lee Jackson had been killed defending his grandmother and mother at a peaceful voting march that Josea Williams said, we should take Jimmy Lee Jackson's coffin and we should march it all the way to Montgomery, the point being that we should put the body of sacrifice of our brothers and sisters and lay it bare and expose it before the nation so that the world can see what we are prepared to give, what we are in fact giving in service of equality, and that to me is the heart of the Voting Rights Act. It was a national commitment that said we are going to use the power of the federal government and of state authority not only to subjugate, and not to turn a blind eye while state government subjugate, but to elevate the voices of democratic participation in the polity and to stand for a minority inclusion principle that we cannot turn back from. That's how I regard the voting rights. We'll be right back. The minority inclusion principle that you're talking about ended up being embodied in different parts of the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, but one of the most important components was a practical process called preclearance, according to which if you're in a part of the country with a history, a demonstrated history of race based voting exclusion, before you can change the way that you district and assign voters to different districts, which of course is crucial to how voting outcomes are produced, you had to go to the Department of Justice and get the Department of Justice to review your plan, and then very probably you'd have to go to a court and get the court as well to have a look at that plan before you could make a chance. That practice, which remained in place from nineteen sixty five and was then renewed by Congress a couple of times, came under attack in a very important voting rights case, landmark case called Shelby County against Holder that the Supreme Court decided in twenty thirteen, and you were one of the people who argued that case before the Supreme Court while working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, tell us about what that experience was like, and then through that maybe tell us about how the case came out and what you feel about it. Absolutely, so, Shelby County, I believe is rightfully regarded as one of the most significant civil rights cases of this generation. Unfortunately, and I will begin at the end, it stands in some ways for the proposition not only that a particularly effective piece of the Voting Rights Act has been rendered inoperable, the preclearance provision of which you spoke, but also the case stands for the proposition that there was a signal that the country was again in retreat and stepping away from the minority inclusion principle that had been so central to our march toward justice and our march toward freedom. And so Shelby County presented those issues. Essentially, the question before the court, not the technical legal question, but the question that I think people should understand was before the Court is the fact that we have made progress in large measure because we have had protections in place, and because we turned away from a system of exclusion and discrimination to a system of minority inclusion. Is the fact of that progress evidence that we should abandon our effort to continue to perfect the union to make more progress? Right? Essentially, there were two roads that were diverging as the Court was presented with Shelby County. Should the improvement that we have seen from the time of nineteen sixty five until twenty thirteen. Should that leave us in the position that there's enough progress and when we can step away? Or must we continue to follow consistent with the judgment of Congress, including a unanimous United States Senate that voted ninety eight zero in support of the reauthorization of the preclarance provisions of the Voting Rights Act? Should we continue to do more to do better to perfect the Union? As I walked in the courtroom to argue the Shelby County case, it was the second time that I had defended these provisions of the Voting Rights Act before the United States Supreme Court. The Northwest Austin case presented a very similar question. It's my understanding that the first Supreme Court argument that John Lewis ever attended was the Northwest Austin case. He was there again on the day of the Shelby County argument, to witness the defense of the statute that he literally had given blood for, and that he knew people who had died for. He wanted to be present. He wanted to bear witness, to see our government at work, and to stand again on the front lines of the fight for equality, and to be in the courtroom. It was a weighty responsibility. I said of the earlier case that it was humbling, exhilarating, and terrifying all at once. All of those emotions are coursing through your body as you rise to the podium in some ways, to try and speak what many people regard as a self evident truth to power that discrimination continues in America, and that voting discrimination continues, and that the protections that Congress had committed to over a long period of time remained important and were doing vital work. That was the self evident truth. In some ways, you feel as if you and your presentation is trying to prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. It is that self evident. And it was difficult to be there and to see the extent to which even during the oral argument, the Court was signaling that it was going to cast aside under our constitutional system, the judgment of the Congress, and I think we have seen on the backside what has happened in the wake of Shelby County. That is, those things that were self evident have proven to be true, and that many are taking the signal that the federal government is in retreat from minority voter protection and those who wish to win elections through nefarious means are trying to have their way. The day that the case came down, I remember very vividly sitting at my computer doing what I always do in the Supreme Court decides it's big cases, you know, they come down, I get them on the computer. I read them as fast as I humanly can. Then I sit down and I write something for my my column about it. And my opening line that day was the Civil Rights era ended. Today. I wonder, looking back at this in retrospect, if I overstated the case in your view. What I meant, of course, was that symbolically, the Voting Rights Act was at the very core of the civil rights movement, and because it had been renewed by Congress, Congress had maintained the momentum in some sense of the civil rights movement, even in the face of conservative opposition to it sometimes and that the Supreme Court, by this extreme activist decision, was blocking the progress of the civil rights movement. When you look back at it from a distance of now just a little more than seven years, and you think about the consequences of that decision, do you feel as though the civil rights movement was in some important ways stymied or blocked, or do you think that there have been creative ways for activists and others to try to continue to press for voting rights notwithstanding the great limit that the Court placed on this extraordinary tool, the Voting Rights Act. It's an important question, Noah, and I think for the answer, I am reminded of the work of Alexander Kasar. Alex Kasar wrote an important book about the history of the right to vote, and one of the central tenants of Professor Kaisar's book is that there is a dominant and somewhat ubiquitous understanding or theory out there that America and American democracy has been on a path of unidirectional progress. That is to say, that things always get better, we're always improving, and things are always moving forward. What case are, among other things, added to the conversation is that when you look at the story of voting in America, what you see is not a pattern of unidirectional progress, of a march that is ever forward. But what you see is a history of ebbs and flows, concerted efforts to push and expand the reach of the franchise, and then reactions against those pushes for greater democratic inclusion, and rearguard efforts that push back and try and limit the franchise. And so, because I had the understanding of the nature of the struggle for voting rights, perhaps for civil rights more broadly, that it's action and reaction, that it's not just a unidirectional march forward, I understood that Shelby County was a very disappointing and important mark on the course of civil rights and voting history, but would not be the final word, would not be the end of the nation's quest for civil rights, but was perhaps the end of a chapter that signaled that there were gathering clouds ahead, and that there were difficult days ahead, but that those of us who remain, like John Lewis, undaunted in the face of long odds, would continue to put our shoulder against the Boulder and push for greater inclusion and to try and move the country forward again. So I bring that understanding to the fight for civil rights, that sometimes it's faced with setbacks, and that what's important is to be unyielding in the face of those setbacks and to push and demand more. You yourself have had an extraordinary career fighting those setbacks and trying to be an advocate for and being an advocate for civil rights. I know you went to Connecticut College, where my brother teaches in the philosophy department, a college that is an amazing place. Then you went to ny U Law School, where I myself started my academic career, and then you worked for many years CPLDF and then had various responsibilities and positions in the Obama administration, and then working at the Senate as well, and now you're a Commissioner of the US Commission on Civil Rights. When you think about what you can do going forward, and you're still very young man, when you think about the next phase of your own life and connect that to the cause of civil rights, what strikes you as the biggest challenges and where would you like to be able to make contributions in the next phase of your own professional life. Thank you for that question. And I think about the fights for educational opportunity and the inequities that we see both in K through twelve education and in higher education, and how important education is as being a tool in some sort of civic transcendence. It is a pathway to opportunity. I think, of course, about the issues of criminal justice and the relationship between minority communities and law enforcement across the nation. I think about the path that the nation has walked of increasingly militaristic policing tactics, but the opportunity and the possibility that is there to revisit the relationship between law enforcement and minority communities and all communities. I remain committed to the idea that there is a way to align our democratic institutions where we are not fearing the differences that exist in our society, but are regarding them as a strength that we can commit to and lift up voices in service of the common idea that we share that we are stronger together than we are when we curry divisiveness in the people. And so I hope to try and use the remaining days that I have not feeling as much of a young man as I once was, but hopefully there are some more miles on the odometer to continue to work at these things in large and small ways. And the last thing that I would say on this point, because it's such an important question you've asked, is that John Lewis understood that he was able to be a catalyst for change. He was able to put himself on the front lines, but he was also able to recognize that there were generations of people that were coming behind him, and that their voices and contributions and ideas were no less valuable than what his contributions had been in his day. And so one of the ways that I have tried to carry forward the lessons of the civil rights movement is that piece of transcendence that when people are coming together for collective aims, you should not feel that any leader or any one person as all the right ideas or has the single path to improve things. You have to make space for those who come from different places and at different times to try and advance the ideal of perfecting the union. I want to thank you for reflecting on the legacy of John Lewis so thoughtfully, and also for picking up his torch and carrying it in your own career, and for helping guide us in that direction going forward. I'm really really grateful, not just for the conversation but the work that you've been doing. Thank you all the best, Take care. Talking to Dabo about the legacy of John Lewis is a powerful reminder that we all deserve to feel some pride in being citizens of a country that could produce an extraordinary person like John Lewis, but also that we bear responsibility as citizens to try to continue the fight that John Lewis had to pursue in order to try to achieve equal rights for all Americans. Our legacy is a complicated and mixed one. The history of racism is not merely in the past, but continues into the present. The struggle for civil rights is not over. People like Dabo are continuing to fight it, but that's not enough anymore than it was enough for John Lewis to do so. Dabo reminds us that we all have to continue in that challenge, and that ultimately, if we want to oversee and supervise all of the forces of our government, including the police, we need to do it via democracy. That means we need to speak, We need to think, we need to vote. Until the next time I speak to you, be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Jane Cott, with mastering by Jason Gambrell and Martin Gonzalez. Our showrunner is Sophia mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. I also write a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash Podcasts. And one last thing. I just wrote a book called The Arab Winter, a Tragedy. I would be delighted if you checked it out. If you liked what you heard today, please write a review or tell a friend. You can always let me know what you think on Twitter. My handle is Noah R. Feldman. This is Deep Background.