A More Perfect Electoral College: Challenging Winner-Takes-All Provisions Under The Twelfth Amendment, 2020 American University Washington College of Law
A More Perfect Electoral College: Challenging Winner-Takes-All Provisions Under The Twelfth Amendment, Eric T. Tollar, Spencer H. Kimball
Legislation and Policy Brief
No abstract provided.
Daniel Pule And Others V Attorney General And Others Selected Judgment No. 60 Of 2018, 2020 University of Zambia
Daniel Pule And Others V Attorney General And Others Selected Judgment No. 60 Of 2018, James Kayula
SAIPAR Case Review
No abstract provided.
Generals & General Elections: Legal Responses To Partisan Endorsements By Retired Military Officers, 2020 Vanderbilt University Law School
Generals & General Elections: Legal Responses To Partisan Endorsements By Retired Military Officers, Hannah M. Miller
Vanderbilt Law Review
Retired generals and admirals of the U.S. military appear to be endorsing partisan political candidates in greater numbers, with more visibility. This Note argues that the practice represents a clear danger to civilian control over the military and weakens military effectiveness. It explains that while retirees remain subject to military jurisdiction, the existing array of statutory and regulatory restrictions on political activity cannot adequately address the problem. Neither can professional norms be expected to shore themselves up to solve it. This Note describes how political restrictions on service members have evolved over time in response to novel challenges to civilian …
Are Two Minorities Equal To One?: Minority Coalition Groups And Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act, 2020 Fordham University School of Law
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 …
The State Attorney General’S Duty To Advise As A Source Of Law, 2020 University of Richmond School of Law
The State Attorney General’S Duty To Advise As A Source Of Law, Winthrop Jordan
University of Richmond Law Review
This Comment seeks to help fill that gap by considering how a state attorney general’s duty to advise functions as a source of law, by proposing six general models of how the opinions of a state attorney general can alter the legal rights, duties, and relations of persons. In doing so, this Comment still seeks to acknowledge and respect the fact that each state’s individual constitution and traditions will create a unique role for its attorney general’s duty to advise in shaping state law.
Challenging Congress's Single-Member District Mandate For U.S. House Elections On Political Association Grounds, 2020 William & Mary Law School
Challenging Congress's Single-Member District Mandate For U.S. House Elections On Political Association Grounds, Austin Plier
William & Mary Law Review
No abstract provided.
Rucho For Minimalists, 2020 Mercer University School of Law
Rucho For Minimalists, Benjamin Plener Cover
Mercer Law Review
In one of last term’s most consequential cases, Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court of the United States decided, 5–4, that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” This limits the power of the federal courts to address what many, this author included, consider a significant threat to American democracy: the manipulation of electoral maps to favor certain voters or candidates. Federal courts may still intervene to vindicate the one-person-one-vote principle, enforce the Voting Rights Act (VRA), or invalidate racial gerrymanders. But not to limit partisan gerrymandering. Writing for the majority, Chief …
You’Ve Got (Political) Questions? We’Ve Got No Answers, 2020 Mercer University School of Law
You’Ve Got (Political) Questions? We’Ve Got No Answers, Michael R. Dimino
Mercer Law Review
In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court of the United States held that partisan-gerrymandering claims present non-justiciable political questions. The decision seemingly settled a controversy that had existed for decades, during which the Court was simultaneously unwilling to declare partisan-gerrymandering claims non-justiciable and unable to agree on a judicially manageable standard for adjudicating those claims. In Rucho, for the first time, a five-Justice majority definitively concluded that there are no judicially manageable standards to determine the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders, and therefore held that federal courts lacked jurisdiction to hear cases raising such claims.
Although the Court …
Federal Oversight Of State Primaries: The Troubling Drift From Equal Protection To Association, 2020 Mercer University School of Law
Federal Oversight Of State Primaries: The Troubling Drift From Equal Protection To Association, Jacob Eisler
Mercer Law Review
The latter half of the twentieth century saw a dramatic transformation in the degree and quality of federal judicial oversight of the voting process. With the one-person, one-vote jurisprudence, the Supreme Court of the United States imposed a basic requirement of personal equality in district line-drawing. In the context of race, Gomillion v. Lightfoot became the beachhead in the premise that racial discrimination will not be tolerated in voting procedure. A few decades later, Davis v. Bandemer suggested that fair district line-drawing could require non-discrimination on the grounds of party identification. In each of these domains of court-led intervention, one …
Voter Suppression Post-Shelby: Impacts And Issues Of Voter Purge And Voter Id Laws, 2020 Mercer University School of Law
Voter Suppression Post-Shelby: Impacts And Issues Of Voter Purge And Voter Id Laws, Lydia Hardy
Mercer Law Review
The old adage that history repeats itself is no truer than when considered in the context of contemporary voting and election law. The history repeating itself within a new wave of legislation is voter suppression that mirrors many issues in the voting rights history of the United States. Since the landmark Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013, there has been a marked increase in the passage of new voting laws as well as corresponding court challenges to these laws. Unlike the discriminatory tactics and laws of the Jim Crow era that were banned and declared unconstitutional after the enactment …
Election Spotlight: Nearly Twenty Years After Hanging Chads, Problems Persist In Florida, 2020 Mercer University School of Law
Election Spotlight: Nearly Twenty Years After Hanging Chads, Problems Persist In Florida, Christopher Wood
Mercer Law Review
The right to vote is as close to sacrosanct as almost any right in our constitutional system. The election-battleground state of Florida has time and time again come under the national spotlight due to its vote counting practices. Florida fell under immense national scrutiny as the entire nation awaited the resolution of the 2000 presidential election. Bush v. Gore highlighted many of the inherent issues with the Florida system of allowing individual counties free rein to enact their own election procedures. The lack of any central guidance in election procedures has, in large part, persisted. The latest iteration concerns the …
Voter Fraud As An Epistemic Crisis For The Right To Vote, 2020 Mercer University School of Law
Voter Fraud As An Epistemic Crisis For The Right To Vote, Atiba R. Ellis
Mercer Law Review
Despite the antidiscrimination frameworks contained in the constitutional and statutory protections for the right to vote, access to the American ballot box is generally perceived as heavily contested. More precisely, many right-to-vote advocates (and their popular supporters) believe that the right to vote is in a crisis of exclusion so extreme that it represents a resurgence of Jim Crow racial exclusion from the franchise. Advocates for election integrity initiatives and their supporters claim that because of impending threats by “illegal voters” who will distort election results, initiatives like voter identification laws, proof of citizenship laws, and voter purges are necessary, …
Chester Arthur’S Ghost: A Cautionary Tale Of Campaign Finance Reform, 2020 Mercer University School of Law
Chester Arthur’S Ghost: A Cautionary Tale Of Campaign Finance Reform, Anthony J. Gaughan
Mercer Law Review
Chester Arthur may not be the first name that comes to mind when one thinks of major figures in the rise of campaign finance law. But despite his obscurity, he deserves to be ranked among the leading reformers in American history. As President, he signed into law a reform that cleared the way for the modern system of campaign finance to take root.
This Article puts the current debate over money in politics in historical context by examining the first major campaign finance reform in American history. The 1883 Pendleton Act is remembered today for establishing a professional, nonpartisan civil …
Racially Neutral In Form, Racially Discriminatory In Fact: The Implications For Voting Rights Of Giving Disproportionate Racial Impact The Constitutional Importance It Deserves, 2020 Mercer University School of Law
Racially Neutral In Form, Racially Discriminatory In Fact: The Implications For Voting Rights Of Giving Disproportionate Racial Impact The Constitutional Importance It Deserves, Gary J. Simson
Mercer Law Review
In two decisions in the mid-1970s, Washington v. Davis and Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that proving that a law racially neutral on its face disproportionately disadvantages racial minorities does not establish a violation of the Equal Protection Clause or even create a presumption that such a violation has occurred. Disproportionate racial impact “is not irrelevant,” the Court explained, but “it is not the sole touchstone of an invidious racial discrimination forbidden by the Constitution.” The key, according to the Court, lies in proving that the law was the …
Symposium: Liquidating Elector Discretion, 2020 William & Mary Law School
Symposium: Liquidating Elector Discretion, Rebecca Green
Popular Media
No abstract provided.
The Life Of Administrative Democracy, 2020 Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University
The Life Of Administrative Democracy, Joshua Ulan Galperin
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Imagine if Congress, the President, and the industries they hoped to regulate all decided that neither politically isolated bureaucrats nor a popularly sanctioned President should wield the power to administer Congress’ laws, to make legislative-type policy, to enforce that policy, and to adjudicate disputes under it. Imagine if there were another experiment, one that has persisted, but few have noticed.
Imagine no longer. Overlooked by most, there is a model for federal administration that does not rely on isolated administrators or Presidential control, but instead on elected bureaucrats. Today, the United States Department of Agriculture houses over 7,500 elected farmer-bureaucrats …
Planned Obsolescence: The Supreme Court And Partisan Redistricting, 2020 Grand Valley State University
Planned Obsolescence: The Supreme Court And Partisan Redistricting, Ethan Schafer
Honors Projects
Partisan redistricting, more commonly known as gerrymandering, is the act of a political party in power using its majority to draw district maps in such a way that it stays in power or increases its power. The United States Census takes place every ten years as mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, when the maps for state and national Congress are redrawn to better allocate representation among the people. Examples of this include the two cases that are discussed in Rucho v Common Cause, the redistricting case from 2019. In this case, both the Democrat-controlled government …
Privacy Or The Polls: Public Voter Registration Laws As A Modern Form Of Vote Denial, 2020 William & Mary Law School
Privacy Or The Polls: Public Voter Registration Laws As A Modern Form Of Vote Denial, Audrey Paige Sauer
William & Mary Law Review
On May 11, 2017, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PACEI), with the mission to “study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections.” Pursuant to this mission, Vice Chair of the Commission, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, sent out letters to state election officials soliciting all “publicly available voter roll data,” including all registrants’ full first and last names, middle names or initials, addresses, dates of birth, political party, last four digits of Social Security numbers if available, voter history from 2006 onward, information regarding any felony …
The “Whip Hand”: Congress’S Elections Clause Power As The Last Hope For Redistricting Reform After Rucho, 2020 Fordham University School of Law
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 …
Faithless Electors: Keeping The Ties That Bind, 2020 Fordham University School of Law
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 …