Jurisprudence The coward Sam Alito. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Mark Wilson/Getty Images and Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images. Sign up for  Executive Dysfunction , a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story each week about how Trump is changing the law—or how the law is pushing back. You’ll also receive updates on the latest from Slate’s Jurisprudence team. If Wednesday’s disastrous Supreme Court opinion in Louisiana v. Callais reveals one thing, it’s this: Justice Samuel Alito is a coward. In that opinion, he’s either lying to himself or to the rest of us about the future of the Voting Rights Act. Callais essentially gutted what remains of the Voting Rights Act. Alito claims to have done no such thing. The question is why. In Callais , Alito purported to overturn no precedent, claiming he was merely “updating” a framework that the Supreme Court constructed in the 1986 Thornburg v.…