Courts Commons^™

A Modern-Day 3/5 Compromise: The Case For Finding Prison Gerrymandering Unconstitutional Under The Thirteenth Amendment, Shana Iden

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

Vestiges of slavery and systemic disenfranchisement of people of color persist in the United States. One of these remnants is the practice of prison gerrymandering, which occurs when government officials count incarcerated individuals as part of the population of the prison’s location rather than the individual’s home district. This Article argues that prison gerrymandering functions as a badge of slavery that should be prohibited under the Thirteenth Amendment.

First, this Article provides background on prison gerrymandering and charts its impact through history, particularly on Black communities. Moreover, this Article analyzes how litigation under the Fourteenth Amendment has not yielded meaningful …

Evolution Of Legal Topics, Rights And Obligations In The United States, Roberto Rosas

Faculty Articles

What new constitutional rights does the American Legal system have to offer? The United States Constitution is a document that continues to be interpreted every year. The Supreme Court hears recent cases with the purpose of interpreting the meaning of the Constitution. Since the creation of the Supreme Court, the Constitution has been analyzed in different ways – some interpretations lasting decades and some amendments going through changes depending on the different ideologies of the Justices on the Court.

This article discusses some of the rights established by the Supreme Court from 2016 to 2019 and provides the background as …

Reviving The Right To Vote, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Losers in partisan districting battles have long challenged the resulting districting plans under seemingly unrelated legal doctrines. They have filed lawsuits alleging malapportionment, racial gerrymandering, and racial vote dilution, and they periodically prevail. Many election law scholars worry about these lawsuits, claiming that they needlessly "racialize" fundamentally political disputes, distort important legal doctrines designed for other purposes, and provide an inadequate remedy for a fundamentally distinct electoral problem. I am not convinced. This Article argues that the application of distinct doctrines to invalidate or diminish what are indisputably partisan gerrymanders is not necessarily problematic, and that the practice may well …

Domesticating The Gerrymander: An Essay On Standards, Fair Representation, And The Necessary Question Of Judicial Will, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The U.S. Supreme Court has moved beyond its cautious intervention in Baker v. Carr and now firmly controls the law of democracy. Yet political gerrymandering questions so understood have traditionally proven difficult for the Court to examine properly. The recent Vieth v. Jubelirer is but a further example of this phenomenon. This Essay situates Vieth within the reapportionment revolution and ultimately concludes that the central question in gerrymandering cases is the question of judicial will and whether the Court will choose to exercise its power. This Essay closes with a cautionary note: in light of the Court's general performance in …

The Three-Judge District Court In Voting Rights Litigation, Michael E. Solimine

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In recent Terms the Supreme Court has heard numerous appeals from the decisions of three-judge district courts in controversial Voting Rights Act cases as well as in challenges to congressional districts designed allegedly to facilitate the election of members of minority groups. Although the cases themselves have been followed closely, the institution of the three-judge district court itself has received relatively little attention, even though Congress passed legislation in 1976 that restricted the three-judge court's jurisdiction to reapportionment and certain Voting Rights Act cases. In this Article, Professor Solimine argues that numerous problems attend the formation and operation of such …