The Mississippi Law Journal will host a symposium on the Voting Rights Act on Thursday and Friday, April 7th and 8th, 2016, at the University of Mississippi School of Law. In conjunction with this event, Volume 85 of the Journal will include a Symposium Book that will feature scholarly articles discussing current voting rights and election law issues in Mississippi, the Southeast region, and on a national scale.
The Voting Rights Act Symposium will focus on the current status of voting rights in our nation as seen through the unique lens of the Southeast region and Mississippi in particular. The year 2016 marks the recent celebration of fifty years of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and is a year that will usher in a new President of the United States. The landscape of voting rights has undergone significant changes in the recent years. In 2013 the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, struck down a key provision in the Voting Rights Act. Any effective future restoration of the Act lies within the discretion of Congress.
The goal of the Mississippi Law Journal Symposium Book is to highlight both the practical impact of this landmark law on individual rights and its connection with the highest of American ideals—the right to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Guidelines and Deadlines
The Mississippi Law Journal welcomes academic papers addressing recent issues in voting rights and election law. We welcome submissions from legal scholars and from practitioners. The geographical scope of the paper may center on Mississippi or the Southeast region, or it may address the topic on a national scale. While papers of any length will be considered, the ideal length of submissions should be 10,000-14,000 words including footnotes.
The deadline for submissions is Friday, January 22nd, 2016. Please email submissions to Marie Wicks, Editor-in-Chief of Volume 85 of the Mississippi Law Journal, at mewicks@go.olemiss.edu.
For those interested in participating as a panelist during the Voting Rights Symposium on April 7th and 8th, 2016, please email mewicks@go.olemiss.edu by Tuesday, December 1st, 2015, for more information.