![]() Compare detailed profiles, including free consultation options, locations, contact information, awards and education. He recalls how he felt in 2013 when the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the way states were included on the list of those needing to get advance approval for voting-related changes, Within weeks, he says, some Republican-controlled legislatures began passing laws meant to “go around the spirit of the act. Find top Houston, TX Traffic Ticket attorneys near you. Today the framed signing pen and note he received from the 1965 ceremony that turned the bill into law are among his most treasured possessions. ![]() “I just turned to my wife, and I said I never realized that this act that I worked on had such a momentous effect on so many people.” “People not only stood, but they came over and tried to reach out and touch us,” Finkelstein said. John Lewis, the civil rights activist, and Doar, who had been the former assistant attorney general in the department’s civil rights division, when members of the division who had worked on the law were asked to stand. He and others were at a ceremony during the Obama administration that involved Rep. Still, he said, the magnitude of the law would not become clear to him until decades later. I think much to the surprise of many of us, what he pursued was far beyond anything we expected.”įinkelstein said he was “star-struck” as he stood about four rows behind Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights and congressional leaders at the signing of the Voting Rights Act, remembering the moment as overwhelming. “As it turned out, not only was he aggressive, he was far more aggressive and politically adept than President (John F.) Kennedy. “There was concern within the department, and I’m talking of this as chatter amongst the lawyers that worked there, as to whether Johnson would be aggressive in the pursuit of civil rights legislation,” he said. Kennedy’s assassination left the lawyers uncertain about the fight for civil rights. solicitor general and soon to be a Supreme Court justice - and John Doar, who led the Justice Department’s desegregation efforts in the South. It was a time when some of the nation’s best young lawyers sought work at the Justice Department, where Finkelstein recalls working with such figures as famed civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall - then the U.S.
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