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Full-Text Articles in Law
Are Two Minorities Equal To One?: Minority Coalition Groups And Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, Kevin Sette
Are Two Minorities Equal To One?: Minority Coalition Groups And Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, Kevin Sette
Fordham Law Review
Following Jim Crow, vote dilution is the second-generation barrier standing between minority voters and the polls. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) protects racial and language minorities from these vote dilution practices. To sustain a section 2 claim, a protected “class of citizens” must satisfy the criteria laid out by the U.S. Supreme Court in Thornburg v. Gingles. First, the class must constitute the majority of a hypothetical single-member voting district. Second, the class must be politically cohesive. Third, the minority class’s preferred candidate must be defeated by a white majority voting bloc. What the …
Faithless Electors: Keeping The Ties That Bind, Scott Eckl
Faithless Electors: Keeping The Ties That Bind, Scott Eckl
Fordham Law Review
Every four years, the United States chooses a president and vice president. Millions of Americans exercise the right to vote, believing that they are voting for the candidates of their choice. In actuality, 538 relatively unknown party insiders known as electors officially choose the president a month later in fifty-one obscure meetings. Most of the time, these electors mirror the popular votes. However, whether these electors are required to do so and whether the states can enforce laws requiring them to do so are open questions. The Tenth Circuit recently declared statutes that bind electors unconstitutional. A few months before …
The “Whip Hand”: Congress’S Elections Clause Power As The Last Hope For Redistricting Reform After Rucho, Kevin Wender
The “Whip Hand”: Congress’S Elections Clause Power As The Last Hope For Redistricting Reform After Rucho, Kevin Wender
Fordham Law Review
Redistricting activists have long argued that partisan gerrymandering poses a fundamental threat to American democracy. These concerns have become particularly acute as increasingly sophisticated technologies have enabled legislators to draw highly gerrymandered maps that powerfully entrench partisan advantage. Despite these concerns, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 2019 case of Rucho v. Common Cause, declared partisan gerrymandering to be a political issue outside the purview of the federal courts. The decision dealt a major blow to redistricting activists who, for over fifty years, had hoped that the Court would intervene to combat the drawing of electoral districts for partisan …
State Courts, The Right To Vote, And The Democracy Canon, Rebecca Guthrie
State Courts, The Right To Vote, And The Democracy Canon, Rebecca Guthrie
Fordham Law Review
Entire elections can be determined by the way a state judge chooses to interpret an election statute. And yet, there has been little scholarly attention on how judges construe statutes regulating elections at the state level. This Note begins to redress that lack of attention by undertaking an in-depth analysis of one interpretive tool historically invoked by state courts. The “Democracy Canon” is a substantive canon urging courts to liberally construe election statutes in favor of voter enfranchisement. By conducting a review of both historical and modern references to the Democracy Canon by state courts, this Note argues that courts …