Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Lani Guinier (born 1950) has been a professor at Harvard Law School since 1998. In 1974, she graduated from Yale Law School. She served seven years as a litigator for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Guinier is an advocate of cumulative voting. Guinier's father was Jamaican, her mother was Jewish.
President Clinton nominated Guinier to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights , but later withdrew her nomination in the face of intense criticism of the views set forth in scholarly publications. Clinton said that he had not been acquainted with Guinier's views before nominating her. What was most controversial was Guinier's solution to the problems minorities have in being elected to legislative bodies. Guinier said the solution to underrepresentation as lay not in gerrymandering "majority minority" districts, but in creating multi-member "superdistricts", usually resulting in multi-party systems, representatives are chosen by a form of proportional representation known as cumulative voting. Based on this incident, Guinier could be considered one of the most prominent victims of borking and specifically "the most instant witch hunt in history" as a "Quota Queen".
- "Gifted with second sight, we can share our stories ... build coalitions, develop a voice. ... We shall speak until all the people gain a voice." (1994)
- "If we can't talk about race, then when we talk about crime, we're really talking about other things, and it means that we're not being honest in acknowledging what the problem is."
- "for those at the bottom, a system that gives everyone an equal chance of having their political preferences [by which she means political representatives] physically represented is inadequate. A fair system of political representation would ensure that disadvantaged and stigmatized minority groups also provide mechanisms to have a fair chance to have their policy preferences satisfied."
- "Single member districts improve the prospects of minority representation only to the extent that there is substantial residential segregation at the appropriate geographic scale. Thus, for Latinos who live in barrios that are dispersed throughout a jurisdiction, districting does not capture either their real or potential power."
- "The Tyranny of the Majority", book title, 1994."
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