Questions fundamental to the study of representative democracy and minority voting rights often revolve around the continued implementation and interpretation of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. Its legacy can be conceptualized as a dichotomy. On one hand, it is the most significant legislative achievement of the Civil Rights movement, and, on the other, it has created a unique arrangement that leads to institutional skirmishes, partisan conflict, and racial tension. Tyson King-Meadows tackles the structural conflict inherent in the statutory language and enactment of the VRA. By means of a Congress-centered framework, the author explores how the executive-focused framework established by President Lyndon Baines Johnson has undermined Congress's role in protecting voting rights.

The VRA was a negotiated act from the start because President Johnson had to create a legislative scheme that would be supported by southern legislators in both chambers of the U.S. Congress. The “Johnson Framework” was a series of procedural and substantive compromises that “reflected a multilayered approach to protecting black voting rights” (p. 58). As a result, the text of the VRA is not as strong as it could have been and sets up an institutional framework in which the spirit of the law can be undermined by a variety of stakeholders.

King-Meadows explores the various ways in which stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels can undermine the spirit of the VRA by focusing on four key features of its legacy: the partisan and ideological conflict that emerged during the 2006 congressional reauthorization of Section 5; the role of the U.S. Supreme Court, race conscious redistricting, representation, and partisan politics; public support and racial attitudes for state election reforms that violate the VRA but do not explicitly mention race, ethnicity, or language; and the institutional conflict between the executive branch and the legislative branch regarding the implementation of the VRA. Each substantive chapter is dedicated to an exploration of these issues separately. Throughout, the author underscores how Congress has failed to create a “Congress-centered approach to voting rights enforcement” (p. 81). Building on “previous research about voting rights enforcement to examine how actors can undermine and have undermined the spirit of the VRA without directly violating the text of the law” (p. xxiii), King-Meadows offers an important analysis of the VRA through a Congress-centered approach.

The author uses a variety of methods and data sources to reinforce the crux of the VRA: The Johnson Framework created “a multistage iterative process” that produces an environment in which stakeholders have access to multiple veto points and leads to questions about who and which institution has the capacity to enforce the law (p. 251). He analyzes the congressional 2006 reauthorization, U.S. Department of Justice enforcement reports and budgetary and employment figures from the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and survey data on public attitudes about voting rights reforms.

Focusing primarily on black voting rights, King-Meadows describes how the Supreme Court and the executive branch have shaped and molded the implementation and interpretation of the VRA. The Court, in successive post-Shaw rulings, reiterated the “federalism costs” of the VRA. The Court's interpretation of the VRA presents “a direct challenge to the necessity of continuing Section 5” (p. 123). The Court has created a legal situation that undermines preclearance and displays its unease with the continued politicization and racialization surrounding voting rights policy and the VRA. Its message was simple: “Live by and die by the text” of the statute (p. 158). In this sense, Congress has abdicated its role as the “‘principal’ controlling the content and direction of voting rights policy” (p. 110).

This reality is made clear in Chapter 3, “Misdirections,” which meticulously details the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA. This extensive analysis spells out the basis of congressional politics, partisanship, and racial politics within the Johnson Framework. Moreover, it details how the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives was able to manage each step of the reauthorization process that enhanced the party's political future. Included in this analysis is the ways in which the Congressional Black Caucus was able to negotiate a deal with the House Judiciary Committee Chair James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). The analysis of the 2006 reauthorization clearly illustrates “the tension between the letter and the spirit of the law” (p. 113).

The authors' text is not without flaws. When the Letter Betrays the Spirit starts out on a strong note by exploring the logic of delegation and discretion and “the construction of the Voting Rights Act and the enforcement infrastructure responsible for implementing the law” (p. 6). Through a series of detailed examples, King-Meadows demonstrates how Congress's role in shaping voting rights policy has been undermined by other institutional actors, including local and federal officials, who are able to delay, defer, or ignore requests for action. However, the conclusion fails to detail how Congress can take a more proactive role. An argument is not convincingly made concerning how Congress can wrestle power away from the executive branch or local officials. King-Meadows' argument that Congress can be both the problem and the solution regarding protection of the future of voting rights is poorly developed. The author's use of the Johnson Framework throughout the text is weakened further by the “increasingly hyper-partisan and hyper-polarized” nature of the contemporary Congress (p. xxvi). In light of the partisan and ideological challenges that are now a common feature of Congress, the concluding chapter falls flat when combined with the reality that the 2006 reauthorization renewed several provisions of the VRA, including Section 5, language assistance programs, and Election Day monitors, and these provisions are set to expire in 2031.

As such, the executive-centered approach to the implementation of the VRA will very likely continue as a multistage institutional process that imparts “federalism costs” on covered states, and Congress's role will probably continue to be marginalized to its oversight function. Chapter 7 underscores the challenges Congress faces due to the amount of bureaucratic power that is used “largely outside the purview of aggressive congressional scrutiny” (p. 238) and how the language and subsequent enforcement and implementation of the VRA “privileged the prerogatives of the president” (p. 250).

The continued use of the Johnson Framework by the Obama administration underscores the power of the executive branch to achieve partisan, ideological, and institutional gains, regardless of who occupies the White House. The meta-narrative of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 concerns the discretion and delegation of decision-making authority that have undermined Congress's role in protecting and extending voting rights, and the partisan interests and racial politics that are constant companions to each decision made by various institutional actors. King-Meadows has provided a strong analysis of the ways in which the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, as well as the extensive federal bureaucracy in the form of the Department of Justice, determine how the letter of the law can be used to undermine the spirit of the law.