Rehnquist denied the allegations and was confirmed 68–26.The Reagan administration had already embarked on a radical makeover of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which enforced the VRA. A scuffle ensued, and both men were arrested. ... Coleman Powell Investigative Fellow. The subject claimed that he shot the victim in self-defense when Powell charged him while brandishing a pocket knife after the subject identified himself as a police officer. He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute (formerly Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society), which supports research to […] john a. powell is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty, and democracy. He also served as Director of Legal Services in Miami, Florida and was National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory.Search for People at Berkeley Lawjohn a. powell is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty, and democracy. And it was central to shaping John Roberts’s legal views.Roberts ironically justified his decision by pointing to the continued presence of Section 2—the very provision he’d tried relentlessly to weaken during the Reagan years. Powell’s opinion was that the minority admissions program at the University of California, with its rigid quota and system of only judging minorities against one another should be subject to “strict scrutiny”, and that Bakke should be admitted as a student. “The Amendment does not entail the right to have Negro candidates elected, but prohibits only purposefully discriminatory denial or abridgment by government of the freedom to vote ‘on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’”In memo after memo, Roberts recast the House version of Section 2 as yet another misguided form of affirmative action. “We were trying to get from none to some.”Roberts was furious. Important court cases of the Civil Rights MovementPowell attended Washington and Lee University for his undergraduate and law degrees. “There is no reason to change the permanent nationwide provisions of the Voting Rights Act from an intent test to a results test,” he wrote in response to an editorial praising the bill.Members of the Judiciary Committee pressed Roberts to explain his current views on the VRA.“Will you on the court fairly apply the Voting Rights Act?” the Republican Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley followed up.“This is an exciting time to be at the Justice Department,” Roberts wrote to Judge William Friendly of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. john a. powell is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties and a wide range of issues including race, structural racism, ethnicity, housing, poverty, and democracy. Powell was a member of the Democratic Party and a World War II veteran. The decision represented the most significant setback for the VRA since its passage in 1965. “We cannot afford to elevate an individual to such a powerful lifetime position whose record demonstrates such a strong desire to reverse the hard-won civil rights gains that so many of us sacrificed so much to achieve.”“I’m just trying to find out on the Voting Rights Act whether you have any problem at all, and trouble at all, in terms of the constitutionality of the existing Voting Rights Act that was extended by the Congress?” Sen. Kennedy asked.Sen.