By prior designation, Burke Marshall did most of the talking for the Kennedy side. He explained to King his view of the severe constraints on the federal government imposed by constitutional federalism, as applied more rigidly in federal laws governing civil rights than in other fields. The Justice Department had little power to intervene in school desegregation cases or even police brutality cases except in very narrowly defined circumstances, Marshall explained, and its widest latitude by far lay in the protection of voting rights. There the Justice Department was, in the watchword of the
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