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Election Subversion And The Writ Of Mandamus, Derek T. Muller Jan 2023

Election Subversion And The Writ Of Mandamus, Derek T. Muller

Journal Articles

Election subversion threatens democratic self-governance. Recently, we have seen election officials try to manipulate the rules after an election, defy accepted legal procedures for dispute resolution, and try to delay results or hand an election to a losing candidate. Such actions, if successful, would render the right to vote illusory. These threats call for a response. But rather than recommend the development of novel tools to address the problem, this Article argues that a readily available mechanism is at hand for courts to address election subversion: the writ of mandamus. This Article is the first comprehensive piece to situate the …


Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Tina M. Brooks Apr 2016

Keeping Up With New Legal Titles, Tina M. Brooks

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this book review, Tina M. Brooks discusses Voters' Verdicts: Citizens, Campaigns, and Institutions in State Supreme Court Elections by Chris W. Bonneau and Damon M. Cann.


The Long Shadow Of Bush V. Gore: Judicial Partisanship In Election Cases, Michael S. Kang, Joanna M. Shepherd Jan 2016

The Long Shadow Of Bush V. Gore: Judicial Partisanship In Election Cases, Michael S. Kang, Joanna M. Shepherd

Faculty Articles

Bush v. Gore decided a presidential election and is the most dramatic election case in our lifetime, but cases like it are decided every year at the state level. Ordinary state courts regularly decide questions of election rules and administration that effectively determine electoral outcomes hanging immediately in the balance. Election cases like Bush v. Gore embody a fundamental worry with judicial intervention into the political process: outcome-driven, partisan judicial decisionmaking. The Article investigates whether judges decide cases, particularly politically sensitive ones, based on their partisan loyalties more than the legal merits of the cases. It presents a novel method …


Deliberative Dilemmas: A Critique Of Deliberation Day From The Perspective Of Election Law, Chad Flanders Jan 2007

Deliberative Dilemmas: A Critique Of Deliberation Day From The Perspective Of Election Law, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

My paper deals with two subject areas - deliberative democracy theory and election law - that have had surprisingly little contact with another. My paper tries to remedy this lacuna by looking at how the two fields intersect and can contribute to the understanding of one another. In particular, I look in detail at a particularly prominent proposal by two political theorists, Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin's Deliberation Day, and how the aims of that proposal might be frustrated by the present structure of American election law. I argue that because they fail to take into account certain structural features …


Managing Gerrymandering, Mitchell N. Berman Jan 2005

Managing Gerrymandering, Mitchell N. Berman

All Faculty Scholarship

Last spring, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, the Supreme Court addressed a claim of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering for the first time since having held such claims justiciable, 18 years earlier, in Davis v. Bandemer. Vieth was a fractured decision. All nine Justices agreed that partisan gerrymandering is of constitutional moment, a substantial majority declaring that excessive partisanship is unconstitutional. The Justices also united in rejecting the particular gerrymandering test advanced in Bandemer. There agreement ended. Four Justices proposed three tests to replace the unmeetable Bandemer standard. A four-member plurality would have overruled Bandemer more completely by holding that partisan gerrymandering claims …