When my copy of The New Yorker arrives, after perusing the cartoons I turn to the theater section. I live in Boston and so the play or musical itself matters little to me in any immediate sense. Rather, I just like reading how, or whether, the critic draws a connection between productions that are seemingly unrelated. The latest Waiting for Godot revival and The Book of Mormon, you say? Er, not so striking similarities. At first blush, Stella M. Rouse’s Latinos in the Legislative Process and Daniel McCool’s The Most Fundamental Right seem to share about as much in common as Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard and my guilty pleasure, the hair-band musical Rock of Ages. Legislative politics versus public law. Single-authored book versus multiauthored edited volume. Mixed-methods versus legal narratives. Cool, positivist distance versus ideologically overt chapters.

At root, though, the motivation for each work is whether and how minority rights are heard at the ballot box and then forwarded in legislative arenas. Both are therefore contributions to the ongoing question concerning whether or not American political institutions, in these cases electoral procedures and state legislatures, are appropriately receptive to racial, ethnic, and language minorities in the United States. The McCool volume will satisfy public law professors or election specialists who want a classroom treatment that primarily presents chapters that take opposing views on the modern relevance of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The Rouse treatment is a welcome addition to legislative process courses, diversity-themed public policy offerings, and Latino politics courses in its examination of the ways in which Latinos legislators differentially provide substantive representation to Latino interests throughout the legislative process.

While McCool does not offer an introductory chapter to frame his compiling logic, it is evident that the volume draws together lawyers, think-tank academics, state politicians, and university-based social scientists to assess the need for reauthorization of the VRA, with particular attention to Section 2 (disallows drawing election districts that undermine or dilute minority voting influence), Section 5 (mandates “preclearance” for covered states and localities before changes to election procedures occur), and Section 203 (requires multilingual ballots and election information in covered area). Published prior to 2013’s Shelby v. Holder Supreme Court decision declaring unconstitutional the preclearance coverage formula reauthorized by Congress in 2006, the chapters uniformly agree that 1965’s Voting Right Act was landmark legislation necessary to overcome systematic, structural discrimination against African Americans in exercising the franchise. Agreement stops there, however. The majority of the chapters build logic squarely for or against reauthorization (which occurred in 2006 with dramatic bipartisan support), whether or not preclearance remains legal or necessary (Supreme Court said “yes” but the formula must be altered), and how, if at all, the VRA’s directives regarding the drawing of legislative districts remain relevant or just in a federalist system.

Read alone, these debates surely matter; they are among the most defining for the American polity. Read in combination with Latinos in the Legislative Process, however, the “he said/she said” presentation of most of the McCool chapters comes up wanting compared with the empirical adjudication centering the former. Indeed, Rouse’s treatment reminds us why exactly the subject of The Most Fundamental Right—voting—is so crucial beyond general normative appeal. As a matter of empirical fact, full access to the ballot for racial, ethnic, and language-minority groups means that minority legislators are more likely to be elected and to advance a minority group’s substantive policy interests.

Of course, reading in concert also suggests places where each work could be improved. Rouse’s empiricism exposes the selective presentation of evidence to advance seemingly predetermined ideological arguments in several McCool chapters. The voice that nonetheless emerges from McCool’s authors makes the reader want Latinos in the Legislative Process to step back after data collection and analysis to go considerably bigger by offering long-term ramifications of the results. In both, more careful attention to the relationship between case selection and generalizability is necessary. In the remainder of this review, I offer a more detailed accounting of each work, including places of critique. But, as I hope is clear, and as favorable New Yorker reviews convey, these are scholarly productions worth viewing back-to-back.

Latinos in the Legislative Process utilizes a mixed-method approach to examine whether there is a distinct political agenda among Latinos in the United States and how, if at all, Latino state legislators forward this agenda throughout the policy process. As hinted, it is most adept at answering the latter question. Chapters 3–5 test whether Latino legislators provide substantive representation to Latino interests in agenda setting, committee behavior, and in roll-call votes. Findings indicate that ethnicity matters for understanding legislative behavior but, like the findings on substantive representation with other groups, context is key. Latino legislators are more likely to introduce Latino-interest bills when they are one of a few Latino members in the state chamber. For committee behavior, the trend is that Latinos do not engage more frequently on general issues, and are sometimes less active, though the interviews suggest that Latino legislators consider committee activity important. More engagement when Latino interests are of concern is the norm in three of the four states, and having a large Latino constituency propelled committee participation on Latino interests regardless of legislators’ ethnicity. Roll-call vote analyses “do not show any significant and consistent effect for ethnicity” (p. 104). Chapter 6 offers a more holistic comparative case study of how Latino legislators advance Latino interests on two pieces of legislation—one highly salient to Latinos (AZ 1070, an anti-immigration bill) and one with few overt cues to Latino audiences (CA AB9, an antibullying bill).

The biggest shortcoming of the book is that the introduction’s considerable promise of adjudicating why a uniform Latino agenda may not emerge because Latinos are “from different parts of the world [and] do not necessarily share physical traits, histories, or experience” is not given empirical treatment despite claims otherwise (p. 6; see also p. 142). Testing for within-group differences may not have been possible with the American National Election Studies data in Chapter 2, but if this is the case, there is a mismatch between the research question developed and its operationalization. The elite interviews with 25 legislators in California, Texas, and Arizona also do not consider or report on each legislator’s family heritage or the dominant heritage(s) of the Latinos in his or her district (and whether or not legislators think either relevant). Overall, the mixed-method approach is ambitious and admirable, though more systematic pattern matching with the qualitative interviews would strengthen analysis. Not including states that vary significantly in the Latino percentage of the population is also puzzling given the “critical actor” findings (Chapter 3 is a slight exception).

These critiques should be read as places for improvement on a truly fine offering. Rouse offers the comprehensive assessment of Latino legislative behavior. Her contribution provides vital empirical footing upon which the community of scholars can and should build. This work sets a high integrative bar. Sometimes, with a big swing of the bat, you do not hit the ball completely out of the park but standing firmly on third base and looking to score is a mighty impressive place to be.

Read today, The Most Fundamental Right faces one dramatic stumbling block: Much of what it debates was settled when the Supreme Court threw out the previously existing preclearance coverage formula in the Shelby v. Holder decision. The volume remains relevant in at least two senses, though. First, the major discourses on the American political Left and Right in the lead-up to reauthorization of the VRA in 2006 and prior to the Court’s Shelby decision are explicated. Legal minds present the core arguments for and against the VRA in ways full of partisan passion that are frozen in the historical moment. Thus, the volume serves as an important ideological artifact. This is seen most directly in McDonald’s argument for the reason the VRA must be reauthorized and strengthened (Chapter 4) and Thernstrom’s vigorous objection (Chapter 5). Both use Birmingham’s notoriously racist police chief Bull Connor as a rhetorical flashpoint. The latter piece argues that the VRA has morphed into proportional representation and is unnecessary after Barack Obama’s victory. High on rhetoric, short on empiricism—but reflective of modern discourse.

The second major contribution comes from the focus in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 on overlooked VRA provisions mandating that electoral rules, procedures, and ballots appear in multiple languages in particular locales. Most discussion of the VRA relies on a North versus South regional comparison and a black versus white racial distinction. Sells (Chapter 6), however, reports on the shameful treatment of Native Americans at the ballot box in South Dakota and nonimplementation of VRA provisions in the state. He makes a compelling case for Section 2’s empowerment of many Indian voters through the creation of majority Indian districts, as well as the continued need for preclearance procedures to do a better job of protecting language minorities. Nelson, a former elected official in the state, disagrees vehemently in Chapter 7, calling the language provisions too costly and indicating that electoral empowerment of natives in the state is complete. Tellingly, he does not distinguish between high aggregate turnout in South Dakota and the percentage gaps between white and native turnout. Additional chapters lay out the pre-Shelby facts on the VRA and reauthorization (Chapter 1), the evolution of the preclearance debate (Chapter 2), and legal debates surrounding redistricting and influence districts, as well as majority—minority districts (Chapter 3). The concluding chapters make predictions about the VRA’s future and cases expected to be particularly relevant. These predictions are differentially borne out.

On the whole, the volume would have benefited from a more empirical eye. Several arguments are so biased that explication serves only to improperly amplify. But as an artifact for the discourse surrounding the VRA prior to Shelby, and as an introduction to the VRA’s underexplored role in protecting the franchise for languageminorities in the West, The Most Fundamental Right is a welcome addition.