Foreword

• Author: Sherrilyn Ifill
• Position: President and Director-Counsel Emeritus, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
• Pages: 1255-1263

FOREWORD

Foreword

SHERRILYN IFILL*

Thurgood Marshall, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice whose work as a

civil rights lawyer transformed twentieth-century American democracy,

famously said, in a riff on a quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin,

“It’s a democracy, if we can keep it.”But Marshall went beyond

Franklin’s cryptic warning about the fragility of our republic. In a 1978

speech at Howard University School of Law, Marshall—never at a loss

for words or advice—described the critical element to protecting democ-

racy: “[I]n order to keep it,”he explained, “you can’t stand still. You

must move, and if you don’t move, they will run over you.”

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In Marshall’s conception, a democracy—a healthy one—is not one that is

static, but one that must be moved and expanded by the people. Marshall’s con-

ception also presupposes that there are forces perpetually arrayed against democracy.

It is only in the process of consistent, repeated, and intentional transformation that

democracies can be strengthened and maintained. In this regard, every functioning

democracy is in transition.

Marshall’s admonition is a sound one. Healthy democracies are by their

nature dynamic and ever-changing. That is because the core features of a

functioning democracy invite change by empowering its people with the

means to reshape the boundaries of the democracy’s promises and responsi-

bilities. Free and fair elections, an independent press, the opportunity to

peaceably dissent without retaliatory violence from the state, a legal system

that respects the rule of law—these are all tools by which the citizens in a

democracy are equipped to expand, contract, and redefine its boundaries.

With these tools in the hands of millions of citizens, change in a democracy

is inevitable.

Despite the inherently ever-changing nature of our system, “Democracy i n

Transition”could not more accurately describe this particular moment in our

country, and so this Symposium issue is aptly named. American democracy is

indeed in dramatic transition. But the pressing question that most urgently

confronts us is whether our democracy is transitioning toward or away from

* President and Director-Counsel Emeritus, NAACP Legal Defense Fund. ©2022, Sherrilyn Ifill.

1. The Honorable Thurgood Marshall, Assoc. Just., Sup. Ct. of the U.S., Speech at Howard

University School of Law (Nov. 18, 1978) (transcript available at http://thurgoodmarshall.com/the-

equality-speech/ [https://perma.cc/CB4H-J8TN]).

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