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Full-Text Articles in Law
Forum Shopping And The Infrastructure Of Federalism., James E. Pfander
Forum Shopping And The Infrastructure Of Federalism., James E. Pfander
Faculty Working Papers
The recent effort of environmentalists and others to secure progressive social change at the state level enacts a familiar ritual in the history of American federalism. Political actors who have found their initiatives blunted at the national level have often turned to the states. With the ebb and flow of political power between two parties over time, arguments about the relative authority of federal and state governments display far more expediency than principle, far more mutability than predictability. States may be more or less progressive than the national government, depending in good measure on the temper of the times and …
Ideological Endowment: The Staying Power Of The Electoral College And The Weaknesses Of The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Daniel P. Rathbun
Ideological Endowment: The Staying Power Of The Electoral College And The Weaknesses Of The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, Daniel P. Rathbun
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The National Popular Vote (“NPV”) movement is designed to eliminate the federalist impact of the Electoral College without amending the Constitution. By fashioning an interstate compact to grant participating states’ electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, NPV proponents suppose they can induce states to forfeit their electoral “weights” and replace the current, federalist election process with a fully majoritarian one. But by leaving the Electoral College in place, the NPV movement is setting itself up for a double pushback: first, in the form of immediate legal resistance, and second, through states’ long-term involvement in a meaningfully …