While taking her audience into careful consideration, Guinier opens her piece by stating her "lifelong ambition:" "I have always wanted to be a civil rights lawyer"(49). Her statement as the first sentence in this piece gives the reader a sense of who she is and her purpose. As the "first African-American woman tenured professor in the Harvard Law School"(48), she composes an entirely logical argument while holding true to her initial passion: "voting rights, one of the long-standing initiatives of the civil rights movement"(48). She is a prominent author among law journals and written works concerning her purpose as a coalition builder, and appeals to both audiences, as well as students. Guinier is able to uphold a strong position attractive to both fields, while providing powerful personal evidence and documented quotes from a highly influential founding father: James Ma

Guinier continues to appeal to her audience as she entertains with another example in her argument, only this time she, with the help of her four year old son, develops the "principle of taking turns." A picture in his Sesame Street magazine asked a very simple counting question: what game will the children play? As opposed to a group of kids "winning" the majority vote by a show of hands in order to play the game of their choice, Nikolas undoubtedly decided that they would play both games, it was just a matter of which game would be played first or the duration of the games. The child's decision is logical because "to children, it is natural to take turns"(50). The author's argument is again proven effective as she describes the logos in a simple "zero-sum" and "positive-sum" solution. With the "zero-sum" only the "winners" win and thus play the game of their choice. The "losers" get nothing out of the deal. In the "positive-sum" situation, both groups of children get to play what they like, even if the "loser" does not get to play immediately or as many times. With the "zero-sum" solution, "the numerically more powerful majority choice simply subsumes minority preferences"(50), while the true split in the vote is not shown.

Although her idea sounds fair enough, she also considers the "Golden Rule principle"(51). In this, she questions the value of reciprocity and whether or not it will prevent the outcome of majority rule no matter what. She then decides that people are generally looking out for their own well-being and "you cooperate when you lose in part because members of the current majority will cooperate when they lose"(51). The majority is obviously only looking out for themselves as well when in participation because consideration of the minority is not taken into account. In the "principle of taking turns," animalistic tendencies are dulled as a sense of organization and civilization is brought forth. The majority could very easily b

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1331
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)