ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two examples, both drawn from the 1950s and 1960s, in which policy makers used the democratic process itself to protect minorities. First, culled from American South, shows how a southern governor named Luther Hodges set the stage for the racial integration of public schools in North Carolina in 1957 by shifting the cost of maintaining segregation directly onto the shoulders of white voters. Second, culled from the American North shows how an appointed official named Herbert Wechsler sought to abolish the mandatory death penalty for first degree murder in New York, thereby bolstering the rights of criminal defendants. While only snapshots, the efforts that Herbert Wechsler and Luther Hodges took to bolster minority rights in their states arguably provides an example of a democratic model for rights enforcement that did not involve supervisory commissions or courts.
