Yale Law’s Owen Fiss talks about threats to democracy and ‘Why We Vote’
The Modern Law Library
Yale Law’s Owen Fiss talks about threats to democracy and ‘Why We Vote’
January 31, 2024, 8:47 am CST
After 50 years as a professor at Yale Law School, Owen Fiss says his students are still idealistic and passionate about the rights won in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.
As a young lawyer in the late 1960s, Fiss worked with the Department of Justice to implement those laws. A classroom discussion in spring 2020 prompted him to draw upon his legal expertise and decades of experience to produce Why We Vote, his new book.
In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Fiss speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the paradox of the court system—the least democratic branch of government—having the responsibility of safeguarding the right to vote.
He looks back on his work with the DOJ in southern states and his time as a clerk for then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (then on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York) and then-Justice William J. Brennan Jr.
Rawles and Fiss also discuss recent threats to the electoral system and the right to vote, including the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Fiss shares his thoughts about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and whether former President Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot on that basis.
While every book that he writes is for his students, Fiss says, he hopes Why We Vote can impress upon a broader audience the privilege and duty of voting and participating in a democracy.
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