Justices, Advocates Look to Different Histories in Voting Case

The parties’ drastically different views of the past in a Supreme Court argument over the power to control federal elections highlight the limits of using history as an interpretative tool, even as it’s increasingly invoked by conservative justices as the most important way to view constitutional issues.

Legal conservatives for decades have elevated the use of history as an objective check on judges’ power to bend the law to their own political preferences. And the new 6-3 conservative high court majority has leaned into it as the lodestar for constitutional disputes. Litigants—on the left and right—have followed their lead, offering ...