This paper discusses the content of a recent academic article relative to Douglas Arnold’s The Logic of Congressional Action.
The academic article chosen for this paper was written by Jeffery Jenkins and Justin Peck. The title of the paper is Building toward Major Policy Change: Congressional Action on Civil Rights, 1941-1950. This article was published on February 31, 2013 by the American Society for Legal History with a digital object identifier number (DOI) 10.2307/23489453. In addition, this academic article is made up of 60 pages.
After several battles against Southern legislators employing all means to maintain their state’s discriminatory system, two statutes were established – the Civil Rights Act and the Voter’s Rights Act. Arnold’s The Logic of Congressional Action suggests that citizens have the power to control legislators and solicit their potential references. This article is focused on two significant dynamics. First, the researchers examined the ‘sorting out’ process of partisan on issues involving civil rights which first took roots in the late part of the 1930s. In this section of the paper, the authors contributed to a persistent debate over the decision of the Democratic Party to accept the civil rights agenda. Similar to other legal historians who took notice of the vitality of legal decisions following Brown, the authors recommend that the partisan racial shift happened even prior to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1960s. Second, the researchers argued that the document of legislative defeat back in 1940s facilitates in giving clear explanation why supporters of civil rights consider the executive branch agencies and the courts as the venues that ensure ongoing progress in racial equality. Arnold, in the same way, posits the importance of courts to ensure the rights of the people are protected. Jenkins and Peck established the outlook to the courts by showing that the legal approach developed as a result of series of failed attempts to follow legislative remedies. To perform the investigation, the authors made use of Congress as their level of analysis. Together with Arnold’s book, a connection in terms of legislative action can be performed between the two.
Sources
Arnold, R. Douglas. The Logic Of Congressional Action. 1st ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Print.
Jenkins, Jeffery A, and Justin Peck. 'Building toward Major Policy Change: Congressional Action On Civil Rights, 1941--1950'. American Society for Legal History 31.01 (2013): 139--198. DOI: 10.2307/23489453
