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Articles 1 - 30 of 31
Full-Text Articles in Election Law
Gerrymandering And The Constitutional Norm Against Government Partisanship, Michael S. Kang
Gerrymandering And The Constitutional Norm Against Government Partisanship, Michael S. Kang
Michigan Law Review
This Article challenges the basic premise in the law of gerrymandering that partisanship is a constitutional government purpose at all. The central problem, Justice Scalia once explained in Vieth v. Jubilerer, is that partisan gerrymandering becomes unconstitutional only when it “has gone too far,” giving rise to the intractable inquiry into “how much is too much.” But the premise that partisanship is an ordinary and lawful purpose, articulated confidently as settled law and widely understood as such, is largely wrong as constitutional doctrine. The Article surveys constitutional law to demonstrate the vitality of an important, if implicit norm against …
Judging Judicial Elections, Michael S. Kang, Joanna M. Shepherd
Judging Judicial Elections, Michael S. Kang, Joanna M. Shepherd
Michigan Law Review
Melinda Gann Hall’s new book Attacking Judges: How Campaign Advertising Influences State Supreme Court Elections suggests what seems impossible to many of us—a powerful defense of today’s partisan judicial elections. As judicial races hit new levels of campaign spending and television advertising, there has been a flood of criticism about the increasing partisanship, negativity, and role of money. In view of the “corrosive effect of money on judicial election campaigns” and “attack advertising,” the American Bar Association (ABA) recommends against judicial elections, which are currently used to select roughly 90 percent of state judges. Justice O’Connor, who has championed judicial-election …
Paths Of Resistance To Our Imperial First Amendment, Bertrall L. Ross Ii
Paths Of Resistance To Our Imperial First Amendment, Bertrall L. Ross Ii
Michigan Law Review
In the campaign finance realm, we are in the age of the imperial First Amendment. Over the past nine years, litigants bringing First Amendment claims against campaign finance regulations have prevailed in every case in the Supreme Court. A conservative core of five justices has developed virtually categorical protections for campaign speech and has continued to expand those protections into domains that states once had the authority to regulate. As the First Amendment’s empire expands, other values give way. Four key cases from this era illustrate the reach of this imperial First Amendment. In Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. …
Defining Corruption And Constitutionalizing Democracy, Deborah Hellman
Defining Corruption And Constitutionalizing Democracy, Deborah Hellman
Michigan Law Review
The central front in the battle over campaign finance laws is the definition of corruption. The Supreme Court has allowed restrictions on the giving and spending of money in connection with elections only when they serve to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption. The constitutionality of such laws, therefore, depends on how the Court defines corruption. Over the years, campaign finance cases have conceived of corruption in both broad and narrow terms, with the most recent cases defining it especially narrowly. While supporters and critics of campaign finance laws have argued for and against these different formulations, both sides …
Citizens United And The Illusion Of Coherence, Richard L. Hasen
Citizens United And The Illusion Of Coherence, Richard L. Hasen
Michigan Law Review
The self-congratulatory tone of the majority and concurring opinions in last term's controversial Supreme Court blockbuster, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, extended beyond the trumpeting of an absolutist vision of the First Amendment that allows corporations to spend unlimited sums independently to support or oppose candidates for office. The triumphalism extended to the majority's view that it had imposed coherence on the unwieldy body of campaign finance jurisprudence by excising an "outlier" 1990 opinion, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which had upheld such corporate limits, and parts of a 2003 opinion, McConnell v. FEC, extending Austin to unions …
Judging The Law Of Politics, Guy-Uriel Charles
Judging The Law Of Politics, Guy-Uriel Charles
Michigan Law Review
Election law scholars are currently engaged in a vigorous debate regarding the wisdom of judicial supervision of democratic politics. Ever since the Court's 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr, the Court has increasingly supervised a dizzying array of election-related matters. These include the regulation of political parties, access to electoral ballots, partisanship in electoral institutions, the role of race in the design of electoral structures, campaign financing, and the justifications for limiting the franchise. In particular, and as a consequence of the Court's involvement in the 2000 presidential elections in Bush v. Gore, a central task of election …
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 …
The Campain-Finance Crucible: Is Laissez Fair?, Jamin B. Raskin
The Campain-Finance Crucible: Is Laissez Fair?, Jamin B. Raskin
Michigan Law Review
The 2001 passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ("BCRA"), popularly known as "McCain-Feingold," set the stage for a momentous constitutional conflict in the United States Supreme Court in the 2003-04 Term. Among other things, the new legislation bans "soft money" contributions to the national political parties by corporations, labor unions, and individuals; prohibits state parties that are authorized to accept such contributions to spend the proceeds on activities related to federal elections; forbids federal candidates to participate in raising soft money; doubles the amount of "hard money" an individual can contribute in a federal election from $1,000 to $2,000 …
The Contested Right To Vote, Richard Briffault
The Contested Right To Vote, Richard Briffault
Michigan Law Review
For those who believe the United States is a representative democracy with a government elected by the people, the events of late 2000 must have been more than a little disconcerting. In the election for our most important public office - our only truly national office - the candidate who received the most popular votes was declared the loser while his second place opponent, who had received some 540,000 fewer votes, was the winner. This result turned on the outcome in Florida, where approximately 150,000 ballots cast were found not to contain valid votes. Further, due to flaws in ballot …
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 2000 Presidential Election: Archetype Or Exception?, Michael C. Dorf
The 2000 Presidential Election: Archetype Or Exception?, Michael C. Dorf
Michigan Law Review
The day after the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, a colleague who specializes in tax law approached me with mock sympathy. "It must be very discouraging trying to teach constitutional law," he said, "when it's so obviously made up." This view of the Court's decision remains widely held, at least within the academy and among those who did not vote for President Bush. Unlike many of my fellow Democrats and academic colleagues, however, I see no reason to question the motives of the majority (or dissenting) Justices in Bush v. Gore. I certainly do not think that the …
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 …
A More Sensible Approach To Regulating Independent Expenditures: Defending The Constitutionality Of The Fed's New Express Advocacy Standard, Michael D. Leffel
A More Sensible Approach To Regulating Independent Expenditures: Defending The Constitutionality Of The Fed's New Express Advocacy Standard, Michael D. Leffel
Michigan Law Review
Campaign finance reformers argue that the "unholy alliance of private money and public elections" has created "a crisis of confidence in our elected officials." The now-deceased campaign reform advocate Philip M. Stem summed up the role of money in campaigns this way: "[M]oney-power has replaced people-power as the driving force in American politics and the determinant of electoral victory." One form of "money-power" in elections that received a great deal of attention in the last election cycle was "independent expenditures." Independent expenditures are funds spent by interested individuals or groups - usually in the form of television or radio advertisements …
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 …
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 …
Reapportionment--Nine Years Into The "Revolution" And Still Struggling, Michigan Law Review
Reapportionment--Nine Years Into The "Revolution" And Still Struggling, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
Malapportioned legislative districts traditionally have inhibited the effective working of government at the federal, state, and local levels. By 1960, the population disparities among legislative districts had attained such great magnitude "that the integrity of representative government was in many instances endangered." The underrepresented victims of malapportionment sought relief through the courts. Initially the Supreme Court, ever hesitant to enter the "political thicket," declined to address itself to reapportionment controversies. This era of judicial inaction ended in 1962 with the Court's ruling in Baker v. Carr, in which the plaintiffs overcame the formidable barrier posed by the political-question doctrine. …
Representation And Election: The Reapportionment Cases In Retrospect, William P. Irwin
Representation And Election: The Reapportionment Cases In Retrospect, William P. Irwin
Michigan Law Review
In general, both in the two-year interval between Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims and in the period following the reapportionment decisions of June 1964, discussion of the issue among scholars and publicists has tended to center upon four problems of varying scope and precision: (1) the jurisdiction of the federal courts to pass upon aspects of state legislative apportionment; (2) the justiciability of the same matter; (3) the substantive merits of the several cases; and, (4) the implications of the decisions for democratic theory and practice. No attempt is made here to reopen the argument about federal jurisdiction; …
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 …
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, …
Court, Congress, And Reapportionment, Robert B. Mckay
Court, Congress, And Reapportionment, Robert B. Mckay
Michigan Law Review
In the United States, governmental power is divided vertically between nation and states and horizontally, at the national level, among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Constitution leaves the lines of demarcation deliberately imprecise. Thus, from the beginning it was easy to predict that among those holders of power there would be tension (at least), conflict (probably), or total collapse (a possibility). The miracle of the American governmental system, with just this complexity and lack of definition, is the fact of its survival. It is not at all surprising that there have been a number of crises, some of …
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.
Legislative Apportionment And Representative Government: The Meaning Of Baker V. Carr, Jo Desha Lucas
Legislative Apportionment And Representative Government: The Meaning Of Baker V. Carr, Jo Desha Lucas
Michigan Law Review
In three recent cases the Supreme Court has reopened the question of the extent to which federal courts will review the general fairness of state schemes of legislative apportionment. It is a question on which the Court has had nothing to say for over a decade, leaving the bar to patch together the current state of the law from the outcome of cases disposed of without opinion considered against a backdrop of language used in earlier decisions.
Residency Requirements For Voting And The Tensions Of A Mobile Society, John R. Schmidhauser
Residency Requirements For Voting And The Tensions Of A Mobile Society, John R. Schmidhauser
Michigan Law Review
It is the purpose of this article to determine the extent to which persons otherwise qualified to vote are disenfranchised by the complex of state residency requirements and to assess the practical and constitutional aspects of any statutory prospects for change.
Constitutional Law - Freedom Of Speech And Press - Prohibitions On The Publication Or Distribution Of Anonymous Campaign Literature, Frank G. Reeder S.Ed.
Constitutional Law - Freedom Of Speech And Press - Prohibitions On The Publication Or Distribution Of Anonymous Campaign Literature, Frank G. Reeder S.Ed.
Michigan Law Review
Defendant was charged under a federal statute' with the publication and distribution of a pamphlet which concerned a candidate for United States Senator in a special senatorial election and which did not contain the name of the person or group responsible for its publication and distribution as required by the statute. The defendant alleged that his occupation as a farmer made him particularly subject to regulation by the federal government, and that he feared coercion or reprisals from the federal representatives with whom he dealt if he complied with the statute's disclosure requirement. On motion to dismiss the information on …
Civil Rights - Elections - Federal Injunction Against Racial Discrimination, Robert Jillson
Civil Rights - Elections - Federal Injunction Against Racial Discrimination, Robert Jillson
Michigan Law Review
In September 1958, in its first complaint under the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the United States sought to enjoin certain election registrars and deputy registrars in Terrell County, Georgia from continuing racially-discriminatory practices in their registration of voters. The defendants, claiming the 1957 statute to be unconstitutional, moved for dismissal. The district court granted defendants' motion, rejecting government arguments that the subsection authorizing suit by the United States was limited to cases, like the case before the Court, of discrimination by the state. On direct appeal to the Supreme Court, held, reversed. Because the alleged racial discrimination by …