Pamela Karlan, a noted voting-rights expert and professor at Stanford Law School, will join the Obama Administration as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Voting-Rights Section. Karlan will join the department as it begins a strong counter-offensive on voting rights following the Supreme Court’s limiting of the Voting Rights Act in a decision earlier this year.
Karlan’s post, which does not require Senate confirmation, will likely be at the center of a major legal controversy, the attempt to salvage federal oversight of voting rights following the Supreme Court’s decision, last term, in Shelby County v. Holder. Karlan will be responsible for the Justice Department’s high-profile legal challenges to voting restrictions, including photo-I.D. requirements, in North Carolina and Texas.
In the immediate aftermath of Obama’s election, Karlan was a favorite for a judicial nomination, including to the Supreme Court. Before the Senate imposed the nuclear option, those hopes were largely abandoned; it was widely believed that Karlan could never muster enough votes to overcome a sure Republican filibuster. But since the Senate effectively returned the threshold for confirmation to fifty votes, Karlan may resurface as a judicial nominee once again.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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