Podcast
Harvard Law School Professor Guy-Uriel Charles joins Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss the US Supreme Court’s decision to effectively dismantle the Voting Rights Act, its political aftermath, and what voting rights advocates can do to achieving electoral fairness in its wake.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in the case of Louisiana v. Callais effectively dismantled Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has been the primary tool for voting rights advocates to challenge racially discriminatory voting districts. Within days, states began altering maps, including in Louisiana where Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended a congressional primary—in which mail-in voting had already started—to draw new districts.
Harvard Law School Professor Guy-Uriel Charles saw the decision coming. Earlier this year he and his colleagues wrote a remarkably prescient article in the Yale Law Journal predicting the high court’s decision and its impacts. He joints Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss how pushing for forms of proportional representation now may be voting rights advocates’ most effective strategy to achieving electoral fairness.
Coming soon!
Guy-Uriel E. Charles is the Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he serves as Faculty Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, his scholarship focuses on how law mediates political power and how law addresses racial subordination. He has published more than 30 articles in leading journals and is co-author of two casebooks, “Racial Justice and Law” and “Election Law in the American Political System.” His long collaboration with Luis Fuentes-Rohwer has produced some of the most prescient scholarship on the VRA’s decline, including a 2015 article “The Voting Rights Act in Winter: The Death of a Superstatute” and the February 2026 Yale Law Journal piece that is the anchor for today’s conversation.
Before joining Harvard, Charles held the Edward and Ellen Schwarzman Professorship of Law at Duke, where he founded the Duke Law Center on Law, Race and Politics. He received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, where he co-founded and served as the first editor-in-chief of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law, and clerked for the Honorable Damon J. Keith on the Sixth Circuit.
“Callais Confusion, Power-Sharing, and the Inevitability of Proportional Representation” (Yale Law Journal)
“The best response to the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling: proportional representation” (MS NOW)
Archon Fung is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. His research explores policies, practices, and institutional designs that deepen the quality of democratic governance with a focus on public participation, deliberation, and transparency. He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in professional journals. He received two S.B.s — in philosophy and physics — and his Ph.D. in political science from MIT.
Stephen Richer is the former elected Maricopa County Recorder, responsible for voter registration, early voting administration, and public recordings in Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth largest county in the United States. Prior to being an elected official, Stephen worked at several public policy think tanks and as a business transactions attorney. Stephen received his J.D. and M.A. from The University of Chicago and his B.A. from Tulane University. Stephen has been broadly recognized for his work in elections and American Democracy. In 2021, the Arizona Republic named Stephen “Arizonan of the Year.” In 2022, the Maricopa Bar Association awarded Stephen “Public Law Attorney of the Year.” In 2023, Stephen won “Leader of the Year” from the Arizona Capitol Times. And in 2024, Time Magazine named Stephen a “Defender of Democracy.”
The views expressed on this show are those of the hosts alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates.
Coming soon!
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