On TAPPED, Bruce Cain, a political science professor at UC-Berkeley, and Daniel Tokaji, an associate law professor at Ohio State, say the VRA was designed to confront straight-up denial of the vote—through tactics like literacy tests. But since then, voting access has been constrained on a more structural, insidious level—through practices such as discriminatory redistricting. Recent elections underscore how the VRA's influence is slipping:

Since the 2000 election, the pendulum has swung back to vote denial. Confusing voting equipment, inaccurate registration lists, and onerous voter-identification rules were all revealed to be barriers to equal participation. Collectively, these practices can be thought of as a new form of vote denial. But the VRA has not kept pace with this change. Though effective in combating minority vote dilution, it has been remarkably ineffective in eliminating barriers to equal access.

Yale law professor Walter Dellinger explains that Congress has hedged around the VRA as well. A few years ago, amid ample evidence that some jurisdictions could escape oversight even if they had serious discrimination issues, lawmakers chose to sidestep a political minefield. As NYU law professor Richard H. Pildes writes, “from a political perspective, confronting these freighted issues of race, ethnicity, and politics in today’s era was all cost and no gain to Congress.”

At Balkinization, Bruce Ackerman says that while the Supreme Court had a chance to strike down section 5, it instead deferred to lawmakers—and to the VRA's unique legacy:

they recognized that the VRA isn't a run-of-the-mill statute, but a landmark in our constitutional development. Chief Justice Roberts' opinion makes no secret about the VRA's landmark status, but my theory of constitutional moments, and its historical application to the VRA, helps excavate the sources of Robert's (reluctant) recognition that there really is something special about section 5. It vindicates his sober second thoughts, and his surprising turnaround from the aggressive line he was taking at oral argument....

The Justices' anxious hand-waving shouldn't be taken too seriously. Assuming that Obama wins reelection, the liberal side will gain new vitality, and perhaps even a majority, by the time Section 5 comes up again.

If that narrative unfolds in the coming years, it will be a testament to the success of the Voting Rights Act in democratizing the electorate. The question now is whether the political system is mature enough to start a critical conversation about giving the law fresh life. However that debate plays out, the result will reflect how far we've come and how much farther we have to go.

Image: "By the way, what's the big word?" (Bill Mauldin / St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1964)