Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Race and law (10)
- Voting (10)
- Voting Rights Act (10)
- Minorities (9)
- Equal Protection Clause (8)
-
- African Americans (7)
- United States Supreme Court (7)
- Congressional districts (6)
- Election (6)
- Fifteenth Amendment (6)
- Racism (6)
- Shaw v. Reno (6)
- Apportionment (5)
- Baker v. Carr (5)
- Discrimination (5)
- Disenfranchisement (5)
- Equal protection (5)
- Gerrymandering (5)
- Reapportionment (5)
- Redistricting (5)
- Voting rights (5)
- District (4)
- Vote (4)
- Vote dilution (4)
- Constitution (3)
- Representation (3)
- Texas (3)
- Absentee ballots (2)
- Civil Rights Act (2)
- Crazy quilt (2)
Articles 1 - 30 of 41
Full-Text Articles in Election Law
Election Law Federalism, Justin Weinstein-Tull
Election Law Federalism, Justin Weinstein-Tull
Michigan Law Review
This Article provides the first comprehensive account of non-Voting Rights Act federal voting laws. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—long the most effective voting rights law in American history—was disabled by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is in the crosshairs. As the Supreme Court becomes more hostile to race-based antidiscrimination laws like the Voting Rights Act, Congress will turn to race-neutral, election administration-based reforms to strengthen the right to vote. Indeed, many proposals for reform post-Shelby County have taken this form. The federal laws this Article examines—the National Voter …
Causation Or Correlation? The Impact Of Lulac V. Clements On Section 2 Lawsuits In The Fifth Circuit, Elizabeth M. Ryan
Causation Or Correlation? The Impact Of Lulac V. Clements On Section 2 Lawsuits In The Fifth Circuit, Elizabeth M. Ryan
Michigan Law Review
Under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, illegal vote dilution exists when an electoral standard, practice, or procedure results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or color Plaintiffs demonstrate vote dilution by introducing evidence regarding a variety of objective factors, including whether voting in the jurisdiction in question is polarized along racial lines. In 1993, the Fifth Circuit adopted a new standard for section 2 plaintiffs trying to prove racially polarized voting. The Fifth Circuit held that demonstrating a mere correlation between race and vote was insufficient to establish racially polarized …
Voter Identification, Spencer Overton
Voter Identification, Spencer Overton
Michigan Law Review
In the wake of closely contested elections, calls for laws that require voters to present photo identification as a condition to cast a ballot have become pervasive. Advocates tend to rely on two rhetorical devices: (1) anecdotes about a couple of elections tainted by voter fraud; and (2) "common sense" arguments that voters should produce photo identification because identification is required to board airplanes, buy alcohol, and engage in other activities. This Article explains the analytical shortcomings of anecdote, analogy, and intuition, and applies a cost-benefit approach generally overlooked in election law scholarship. Rather than rushing to impose a photo-identification …
When Courts Shouldn't Take The Initiative: Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, Initiative Petitions, And Operation King's Dream, Francesca Ambrosio
When Courts Shouldn't Take The Initiative: Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, Initiative Petitions, And Operation King's Dream, Francesca Ambrosio
Michigan Law Review
This Note argues that interpreting section 2 to exclude initiative proposals during their circulation phase is the only way to avoid insurmountable statutory construction problems and constitutional objections. It grounds the theoretical discussion of the VRA in an analysis of how the court applied section 2 in Operation King's Dream. Part I provides the legal landscape of a section 2 claim, including relevant legislative history and the essential elements of a successful claim. Part II contends that because no voting takes place during the petition phase of a proposal, petition circulation can neither deny nor abridge the right to …
Turning The Page On Section 5: The Implication Of Multiracial Coalition Districts On Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Daniel A. Zibel
Turning The Page On Section 5: The Implication Of Multiracial Coalition Districts On Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Daniel A. Zibel
Michigan Law Review
This Note analyzes the use of coalition districts in light of current section 5 and equal protection jurisprudence and argues that, in some circumstances, the Equal Protection Clause compels the use of coalition districts to achieve non retrogression under section 5. Part I examines the use of coalition districts, using the litigation in Page v. Bartels as an example. It then argues that the Supreme Court's opinion in Georgia v. Ashcroft permits jurisdictions to create viable racial coalition districts to comply with section 5. Part II argues that while Georgia v. Ashcroft permits the use of coalition districts to achieve …
Reinforcing Representation: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz
Reinforcing Representation: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz
Michigan Law Review
A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …
Morgan Kousser's Noble Dream, Heather K. Gerken
Morgan Kousser's Noble Dream, Heather K. Gerken
Michigan Law Review
J. Morgan Kousser, professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology, is an unusual academic. He enjoys the respect of two quite different groups - historians and civil rights litigators. As a historian, Kousser has written a number of important works on the American South in the tradition of his mentor, C. Vann Woodward, including a foundational book on southern political history, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910. Many of his writings have become seminal texts among election law scholars. Kousser has also used his historical skills …
The Unwelcome Judicial Obligation To Respect Politics In Racial Gerrymandering Remedies, Jeffrey L. Fisher
The Unwelcome Judicial Obligation To Respect Politics In Racial Gerrymandering Remedies, Jeffrey L. Fisher
Michigan Law Review
Like it or not, the attack on "bizarrely" shaped majority-minority electoral districts is now firmly underway. Nearly four years have passed since the Supreme Court first announced in Shaw v. Reno that a state's redistricting plan that is "so extremely irregular on its face that it rationally can be viewed only as an effort to segregate the races for purposes of voting" may violate the Equal Protection Clause. Such a district, the Court held, reinforces racial stereotypes, carries us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters, and "threatens to undermine our system of …
Democracy And Dis-Appointment, Lani Guinier
Democracy And Dis-Appointment, Lani Guinier
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy
Race And Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw V. Reno, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Samuel Isaacharoff
Race And Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines After Shaw V. Reno, T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Samuel Isaacharoff
Michigan Law Review
Shaw is no doubt a major opinion that attempts to define limits on the use of racial or ethnic classifications in electoral redistricting. The main thrust of this article is to assess the critical question of whether Shaw renders unconstitutional the type of race-conscious realignment of electoral configurations that have given meaning to the voting rights reforms of the past two decades. In making this assessment, we try to ascertain exactly how the Court has limited the use of race-conscious districting, and we try to determine whether there is any jurisprudential coherence to the Court's latest confrontation with the law …
Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," And Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw V. Reno, Richard H. Pildes, Richard G. Niemi
Expressive Harms, "Bizarre Districts," And Voting Rights: Evaluating Election-District Appearances After Shaw V. Reno, Richard H. Pildes, Richard G. Niemi
Michigan Law Review
This article attempts to define the constitutional principles that characterize Shaw and to suggest how those principles might be applied in a consistent, meaningful way. Part I, in which we argue that Shaw must be understood to rest on a distinctive conception of the kinds of harms against which the Constitution protects, is the theoretical heart of the article. We call these expressive harms, as opposed to more familiar, material harms. In Part II, we briefly survey the history of previous, largely unsuccessful, efforts in other legal contexts to give principled content to these kinds of harms in redistricting. …
Ugly: An Inquiry Into The Problem Of Racial Gerrymandering Under The Voting Rights Act, Daniel D. Polsby, Robert D. Popper
Ugly: An Inquiry Into The Problem Of Racial Gerrymandering Under The Voting Rights Act, Daniel D. Polsby, Robert D. Popper
Michigan Law Review
In the discussion that follows, we focus on the case of congressional districting rather than on districting in general. Although we proceed in this manner for the sake of clarity, it is also true that no single, all-purpose normative theory of electoral mechanics will cover every case of democratic representation, from county commissions to mosquito control districts to sovereign legislatures. We do not claim that one can generalize our argument to every sort of election to which the VRA might apply. Yet we think our argument does approximate a theory of general application.
Polarized Voting And The Political Process: The Transformation Of Voting Rights Jurisprudence, Samuel Issacharoff
Polarized Voting And The Political Process: The Transformation Of Voting Rights Jurisprudence, Samuel Issacharoff
Michigan Law Review
This article attempts to provide an analytic framework for the evolved voting rights law as it confronts the persistent effects of racial factionalism in the electoral arena. Insight into the corrosiveness of racially polarized voting and its frustration of minority electoral opportunity has organized and guided the new voting rights jurisprudence. This article will argue that the combination of process distortions from majority domination of electoral outcomes and substantive deprivation from minority exclusion defines this area of law and protects it against challenge from currently fashionable academic currents. The central insights gathered from the focus on polarized voting, I will …
Voting Rights Act Section 2: Racially Polarized Voting And The Minority Community's Representative Of Choice, Evelyn Elayne Shockley
Voting Rights Act Section 2: Racially Polarized Voting And The Minority Community's Representative Of Choice, Evelyn Elayne Shockley
Michigan Law Review
A much needed congressional effort to give substance to African-American suffrage resulted in the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (the Act). Although the fifteenth amendment gave African-American men the right to vote in 1870, almost a hundred years later they were still largely unable to exercise the right. This condition did not result from apathy on the part of African-American voters, but rather from their inability to overcome barriers set up by white racists. Practices whites instituted, such as "[l]iteracy and 'understanding' tests, poll taxes, the white primary, intimidation, [and] violence," prevented African-Americans from realizing their constitutional …
Applying Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act To Single-Member Offices, Edward J. Sebold
Applying Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act To Single-Member Offices, Edward J. Sebold
Michigan Law Review
This Note questions whether an exemption for single-member offices is justified. Part I provides a brief overview of the Voting Rights Act and the types of discrimination in the political process to which it applies., Part I then reviews the decisions on single-member offices, including the courts' attempts to define single-member offices. This Part concludes neither Congress nor the Supreme Court dictates an exemption for single-member offices. Instead, single-member offices should be open to challenge if they hamper the achievement of section 2's goals. Part II identifies the goals of section 2 by developing a number of theories to give …
Racial Prejudice And Scholarly Prejudice: New Confrontations At The Selma Bridge, J. Mills Thornton Iii
Racial Prejudice And Scholarly Prejudice: New Confrontations At The Selma Bridge, J. Mills Thornton Iii
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by David J. Garrow
Racial Vote Dilution In Multimember Districts: The Constitutional Standard After Washington V. Davis, Michigan Law Review
Racial Vote Dilution In Multimember Districts: The Constitutional Standard After Washington V. Davis, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
This Note argues that the effect-oriented standard for multimember-district vote-dilution claims is unaffected by the Washington intent requirement. Part I outlines the manner in which multimember districts can dilute minority voting strength. After summarizing Washington's intent requirement, Part II surveys the post-Washington vote dilution cases and demonstrates that the applicability of the intent standard to vote dilution claims is uncertain. Part III first suggests two ways in which White and Washington may be reconciled. That section then argues that White is unaffected by the intent requirement because the standard for vote dilution fits within a fundamental interest analysis …
Proportional Representation By Race: The Constitutionality Of Benign Racial Redistricting, Michigan Law Review
Proportional Representation By Race: The Constitutionality Of Benign Racial Redistricting, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
Wilson raises two questions that are basic to the use of "benign" racial classifications in drawing legislative districts. First, is there a constitutional right to proportional representation and, second, if there is no such right, are there circumstances under which a scheme devised to provide proportional representation is constitutionally permissible. This Note will demonstrate that, while the Supreme Court recognizes the constitutional right of each individual to participate on an equal basis in the community's political process and to enjoy an undiluted vote, it denies any constitutional right of groups to proportional political representation. It will then show that the …
Wilkins V. Bentley: Getting Out The Student Vote In Michigan, Michigan Law Review
Wilkins V. Bentley: Getting Out The Student Vote In Michigan, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
The right to vote is one of the most precious constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has described it as preservative of all rights, a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society, and a bedrock of our political system. Justice Black once stated, "No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live." It supports not only the individual's personal interest in self-government, but also the collective societal interest in broadly based consensual representation. The magnitude of these …
Effective Representation And Multimember Districts, Michigan Law Review
Effective Representation And Multimember Districts, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
The Supreme Court has not decided a case involving an assertion of the claim that a multimember district denies the right of effective representation since Fortson and Burns. However, there have been several subsequent challenges in lower courts to the validity of such districts, and these challenges have generally failed because the factual evidence did not demonstrate conclusively that the voting strength of a legally cognizable racial or political element had been minimized or cancelled. In Chavis v. Whitcomb, however, a three-judge federal district court in Indiana found that the plaintiff had presented sufficient factual evidence to sustain …
Constitutional Law--Equal Protection--Property Ownership Qualifications On The Right To Vote In Special Municipal Elections--Cipriano V. City Of Houma, Michigan Law Review
Constitutional Law--Equal Protection--Property Ownership Qualifications On The Right To Vote In Special Municipal Elections--Cipriano V. City Of Houma, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
Plaintiff, a resident of Houma, Louisiana, who owned no real property, brought a class action seeking to prevent the city from issuing utility revenue bonds approved by a vote of the property taxpayers at a special election. He argued that the Louisiana statute restricting the right to vote in such elections to property owners was unconstitutional. Plaintiff relied on Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, in which the Supreme Court declared that Virginia's required payment of poll taxes for voting in general elections was a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. Harper, he claimed, …
Reapportionment--Legislative Bodies--Significant Deviation From Standard Of Substantial Population Equality Of State Legislative Districts Is Permissible To Provide Representatives For Two Island Counties--Vigneault V. Secretary Of The Commonwealth, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
Since Baker v. Carr, when the Supreme Court overruled a long line of earlier decisions and concluded that the relationship of the equal protection clause to a state's power to create geographical districts for legislative representation was a justiciable issue, state apportionment plans have come under increasing judicial scrutiny. In Gray v. Sanders, the Court held invalid a Georgia primary election plan which favored voters from rural areas. Although Gray dealt with the dilution of individual voting rights rather than legislative reapportionment, it is important as the first enunciation of the now-famous "one man-one vote" test. Specifically, the …
Reapportionment: Success Story Of The Warren Court, Robert B. Mckay
Reapportionment: Success Story Of The Warren Court, Robert B. Mckay
Michigan Law Review
The fascinating thing about this major engagement of the Warren Court is that the principal decisions came to the Court late-1962 and after. Although these decisions precipitated a revolution in the concept and practice of legislative representation at every level of government, they were implemented quickly and with surprisingly little dislocation. The following remarks are intended to report the fact of that adjustment and to explain, to the extent the phenomenon is now understandable, why the change was so easily accomplished. When compared with the delay in public acceptance of decisions in the other areas mentioned above, the success of …
Freezing Voter Qualifications To Aid Negro Registration, Michigan Law Review
Freezing Voter Qualifications To Aid Negro Registration, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
The literacy test, used by many states in determining the qualifications of voters, has proved to be a major obstacle to the elimination of voter discrimination based on racial characteristics. Under recently enacted statutory provisions, citizens who attempt to register to vote in certain states are faced with test questions of such difficulty that it is virtually impossible to answer them satisfactorily. Where there is permanent voter registration, the effect is to secure a position of political dominance for those registered prior to the institution of the tests. In those states in which individuals had been denied registration by prior …
Reapportionment In The Supreme Court And Congress: Constitutional Struggle For Fair Representation, Robert G. Dixon Jr.
Reapportionment In The Supreme Court And Congress: Constitutional Struggle For Fair Representation, Robert G. Dixon Jr.
Michigan Law Review
Fair representation is the ultimate goal. At the time of the Reapportionment Decisions, much change was overdue in some states, and at least some change was overdue in most states. We are a democratic people and our institutions presuppose according population a dominant role in formulas of representation. However, by its exclusive focus on bare numbers, the Court may have transformed one of the most intricate, fascinating, and elusive problems of democracy into a simple exercise of applying elementary arithmetic to census data. In so doing, the Court may have disabled itself from effectively considering the more subtle issues …
Some Comments On The Reapportionment Cases, Paul G. Kauper
Some Comments On The Reapportionment Cases, Paul G. Kauper
Michigan Law Review
Any appraisal of the Supreme Court's decisions in the legislative reapportionment cases must necessarily distinguish between the basic policy ingredients and social consequences of the decisions on the one hand, and the question whether the results were reached by a proper exercise of judicial power on the other. Respecting the first of these considerations, I have no difficulty identifying the social advantages accruing from these decisions. Because of the stress on the population principle, the decisions will afford a greater voice to urban interests, will make the legislative process more responsive to current needs of particular concern to urban dwellers, …
Congressional Apportionment: The Unproductive Search For Standards And Remedies, Michigan Law Review
Congressional Apportionment: The Unproductive Search For Standards And Remedies, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
The increasingly complex problems of elucidating congressional apportionment standards and granting appropriate relief when voting rights have been materially diluted were again brought to the fore in the recent districting decision of Calkins v. Hare. This federal district court decision is illustrative of the uncertainty caused by the Supreme Court's opinion in the landmark case of Wesberry v. Sanders. Although Wesberry resolved two previously contested issues by ruling that congressional apportionment disputes are susceptible of judicial determination and by setting a standard of population equality in delimiting districts, two associated questions were left unanswered. First, even though Wesberry …
Political Thickets And Crazy Quilts: Reapportionment And Equal Protection, Robert B. Mckay
Political Thickets And Crazy Quilts: Reapportionment And Equal Protection, Robert B. Mckay
Michigan Law Review
If asked to identify the two most important cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in the twentieth century, informed observers would be likely to name, in whichever order, Brown v. Board of Education and Baker v. Carr.
Some Current Thinking On Voting Rights, Michigan Law Review
Some Current Thinking On Voting Rights, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
This issue of the Review is devoted to a consideration of certain selected problems of present interest in the area of voting rights.
The Administraton's Anti-Literacy Test Bill: Wholly Constitutional But Wholly Inadequate, William W. Van Alstyne
The Administraton's Anti-Literacy Test Bill: Wholly Constitutional But Wholly Inadequate, William W. Van Alstyne
Michigan Law Review
The nature of American national government has undergone a profound metamorphosis, moving from the near oligarchy which characterized the system as established in 1789 to the imperfectly representative government which it is today. At the time the Constitution was ratified, all restrictions then imposed by the several states on the right to vote for state and federal electors were preserved. These various limitations on the franchise restricted the active body politic to approximately four percent of the total population. Disfranchisement applied then, as now, to those under twenty-one, to those lacking sufficient residence in a given community, to the insane, …