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11 Regul. Rev. Depth 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/rgyrvidh11 and id is 1 raw text is: 














          CREATING AN INCLUSIVE POLITICAL ORDER

                         Guy-Uriel Charlest

    The fundamental   task for American  democracy  today  is to create an
inclusive political order.
    An inclusive order includes everyone. It fundamentally entails creating
a political and constitutional structure that takes seriously the right to vote
and  assures that right is not undermined for any  group, whether  on the
basis of race, ideology, or geography. The future of voting rights law and
policy should focus on  developing a new  political and legal consensus in
which  voting  is regarded  as a universal and  fundamental  right, made
available to all.
    Throughout   U.S. history, race and  political power have  long  been
interrelated.1 Structural political inequality and structural racial inequality
have been  mutually reinforcing, so solving racial discrimination in voting
will require a vigorous commitment  to resolving political inequality-and
vice versa.2 In other words, commitment  to political equality must include
a commitment   to eradicating racial discrimination in voting. To eradicate
discrimination in voting and  achieve real political equality, election law
must   become   centralized  and  nationalized.  States  should  thus  be
precluded  from  regulatory practices  that undermine  inclusiveness  and
political equality.
    In an inclusive political order, the current conception of state sovereignty
in setting election rules has no role to play. That current conception holds that
a state can effectively discriminate on the basis of race because the only way
to stop the state is by proving it acted on the basis of a racial motivation.3


    T Charles Ogletree, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. This essay is an edited
version of the 2021 Distinguished Lecture on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania
Law School.
    ' See Vincent L. Hutchings & Nicholas A. Valentino, The Centrality of Race in
American Politics, 7 ANN. REV. POL. SCI. 383 (2004).
    2 See Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell & Abril Castro, Systematic Inequality and
American Democracy, CTR. FOR AM. PROG. (Aug. 7, 2019), https://www.americanprogress.
org/article/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/.
    3 See Richard H. Pildes & Bradley A. Smith, Common Interpretation: The Fifteenth
Amendment, NAT'L CONST. CTR., https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/
amendment-xv/interpretations/ 141.

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