Law Commons^™

Voting Rights and Election Law is a law school text book covering the law surrounding the electoral system. Coverage begins with voting qualifications and barriers to exercise of the franchise. The book covers the authority of the courts to remedy violations of the right to vote. Other topics include the One-Person/One Vote Doctrine under the Federal Constitution and the effects of the Voting Rights Act. The book also covers the role of political parties and term limits for federal and state office. Campaign finance and political speech each receive treatment. The book concludes with a chapter on methods for remedying …

This Essay critiques the arguments leveled at judicial elections. For each criticism--which I have discovered through a reasonably thorough review of cases and law review commentary--I assess the degree to which the criticism is valid, and also the degree to which other judicial-selection methods fall prey to the same criticism. I argue that the flaws of judicial elections, though often considerable, are shared in large part by alternative selection systems. Beyond, however, being simply equivalent in malignity to other selection methods, elections have--or, rather, may have, depending on the content of judicial election campaigns--one advantage over other systems that instigated …