Senator Cardin, one of the more junior Democrats on the committee, begins with a defense of Justice Marshall (a Maryland native). He talks about what Marshall achieved by convincing the Court to reject its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson authorizing segregation. And how that made our union more perfect.
Cardin says that protecting indivduals against abuses of power is crucial, and asks how the Constitution does that.
Kagan points to the Fourteenth Amendment’s broad guarantees of equal protection and due process.
Cardin is discussing recent Supreme Court decisions that in his view did not give due deference to Congress’s decisions regarding how to enforce the guarantees of the Civil War-era amendments to the Constitution–in particular, in connection with the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act (referred to in an earlier post). Cardin says there are still many barriers to minority voting that exist today, and he says he’s heartened by Kagan’s statements about deference to Congress’s determinations.
