CAREER: We Dare Defend Our Rights: The Political Use of Law in the Enforcement of Voting Rights

最近的选举表明，政治组织仍然很重要。20世纪60年代的《民权和投票权法案》将种族排斥行为定为非法；然而，他们并没有自动执行权利。白人随后适应并采用了新的政治排斥方法。当代的社会和政治背景是不同的，但投票权的模糊性和不确定性却没有。州选民身份法、对提前投票的限制、对登记的限制、对选民名册的清洗、剥夺选举权和不公正地划分选区，已经成为阻碍少数族裔参与的常见系统性障碍。选举权再次受到挑战，新的法律上和事实上的选民压制技术再次兴起。然而，试图建立、维持和运用成功的法律动员所必需的战略能力的政治组织的数量也在减少。了解阿拉巴马州民主党会议如何发展、维持和运用全州战略能力，并有效地利用二十多年来法律动员的支持结构，将有助于我们对社会运动理论的理解，并提供能够适应美国各地和其他西方式民主国家权利倡导团体需求的见解。这个研究项目将建立一个关于少数民族政治组织及其法律运动的研究材料资料库。将制作一部简短的记录片，分发给从地方到国家的公民和政治组织以及从中学到研究生讨论会的广大观众。最后，这个研究项目将在研究的各个阶段纳入代表性不足的学生，增加他们的归属感，这与学术成果高度相关，并传授研究和工作准备技能。这个职业奖的重点是收集和分析数据，研究一个少数民族政治组织如何在20多年（1965-1989）的时间里，在全州范围内持续开展法律运动，最终实现了美国历史上最成功的法律政治运用，以强制行使投票权。为了指导对艺发局的审查，本项目依赖于先前在两个理论标题下的社会运动研究：法律动员的支持结构和战略能力。本研究项目将采用扎根理论、解释分析方法和雪球抽样作为补充研究策略。该项目将深入了解尚未解决的问题，即法律动员的支持结构的不同要素如何与州和联邦层面的成功叛乱相关联。这一分析将促进我们对战略能力形成机制的理解，以及我们对作为战略能力来源的领导力和组织结构的理解。最后，本研究将促进我们理解战略能力的不同方面如何与州和联邦层面的法律动员支持结构的不同要素相互作用。事实上，我们对少数族裔投票权组织的法律运动了解不多。这项研究项目将填补社会法律研究文献中的这一关键空白，并回答有关法律在政治上用于政治目的的关键问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Recent elections have shown that political organizations still matter. The Civil and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960’s made racially exclusionary practices illegal; nevertheless, they did not automatically enforce rights. Whites subsequently adapted and deployed new methods of political exclusion. The contemporary social and political context is different, but the ambiguity and indeterminacy of voting rights are not. State voter ID laws, limits on early voting, restrictions on registration, voter roll purges, disenfranchisement, and gerrymandering have become ordinary yet systemic barriers to minority participation. Voting rights are again being challenged and new de jure and de facto voter suppression techniques are again on the rise. Yet so too are the number of political organizations attempting to build, sustain, and employ the strategic capacity necessary for successful legal mobilization. Understanding how the Alabama Democratic Conference developed, sustained, and employed statewide strategic capacity and effectively capitalized on the support structure for legal mobilization for over twenty years will inform our understanding of social movement theory and provide insights that can be adapted to fit the needs of rights advocacy groups across the United States and in other western-style democracies. This research project will create a repository of research materials on minority political organizations and their legal campaigns. A short documentary will be created and disseminated to a wide audience, from local to national civic and political organizations and from secondary schools to graduate seminars. Lastly, this research project will incorporate underrepresented students at all stages of the research, increasing their sense of belonging, which is highly correlated with academic outcomes, and imparting research and job readiness skills.This CAREER award focuses on collecting and analyzing data on how a minority political organization sustained a statewide legal campaign for over twenty years (1965-1989) culminating in the most successful political usage of law to enforce voting rights in American history. To guide examination of the ADC, this project relies on prior social movement research under two theoretical headings: the support structure for legal mobilization and strategic capacity. This research project will employ grounded theory, an interpretative analytic approach, and snowball sampling as a complimentary research strategy. This project will provide insight into unresolved questions about how different elements of the support structure for legal mobilization are correlated with successful insurgency at both the state and federal levels. This analysis will advance our understanding of the mechanisms through which strategic capacity is created and our understanding of leadership and organizational structures as sources of strategic capacity. Finally, this research will advance our understanding of how different aspects of strategic capacity interact with the different elements of the support structure for legal mobilization at the state and federal level. In truth, we do not know much about the legal campaigns of minority voting rights organizations. This research project will fill this crucial gap in the socio-legal research literature and answer key questions regarding the political use of law for political purposes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.