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Full-Text Articles in Law
Defeat Fascism, Transform Democracy: Mapping Academic Resources, Reframing The Fundamentals, And Organizing For Collective Actions, Francisco Valdes
Defeat Fascism, Transform Democracy: Mapping Academic Resources, Reframing The Fundamentals, And Organizing For Collective Actions, Francisco Valdes
Seattle University Law Review
The information we gathered during 2021–2023 shows that critical faculty and other academic resources are present throughout most of U.S. legal academia. Counting only full-time faculty, our limited research identified 778 contacts in 200 schools equating to nearly four contacts on average per school. But no organized critical “core” had coalesced within legal academia or, more broadly, throughout higher education expressly dedicated to defending and advancing critical knowledge and its production up to now. And yet, as the 2021–2022 formation of the Critical (Legal) Collective (“CLC”) outlined below demonstrates, many academics sense or acknowledge the need for greater cohesion among …
Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey
Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey
Seattle University Law Review
This Article asks whether the openness to court-packing expressed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., Pete Buttigieg) is democratically defensible. More specifically, it asks whether it is possible to break the apparent link between demagogic populism and court-packing, and it examines three possible ways of doing this via Bruce Ackerman’s dualist theory of constitutional moments—a theory which offers the possibility of legitimating problematic pathways to constitutional change on democratic but non-populist grounds. In the end, the Article suggests that an Ackermanian perspective offers just one, extremely limited pathway to democratically legitimate court-packing in 2021: namely, where a Democratic …
Voting Rights At A Crossroads: Return To The Past Or An Opportunity For The Future, Barbara Arnwine
Voting Rights At A Crossroads: Return To The Past Or An Opportunity For The Future, Barbara Arnwine
Seattle University Law Review
This keynote address for the 2005 Symposium: Where's My Vote? Lessons Learned from Washington State's Gubernatorial Election was presented by Barbara Arnwine. The focus of the presentation was on "Voting Rights at a Crossroad: Return to the Past or an Opportunity for the Future?" To students who are on the career path to becoming practitioners of law, and to attorneys and law professors, no role is more important than enhancing democracy. Ms. Arnwine's speech addresses the topics of voting rights from a national perspective highlighting the most pressing challenges. In addressing this theme, four areas of voting rights are covered …
Competing Values Or False Choices: Coming To Consensus On The Election Reform Debate In Washington State And The Country, Tova Andrea Wang
Competing Values Or False Choices: Coming To Consensus On The Election Reform Debate In Washington State And The Country, Tova Andrea Wang
Seattle University Law Review
This Article examines the problems revealed in Washington State's election system as a result of its staggeringly close gubernatorial election, and compares such problems to those encountered by other states in the 2004 election. It examines the challenge of fixing these problems through the prism of the ongoing debate over what values and goals are most important when making election administration decisions. The various values and goals of expanding voter access, increasing voter participation and election efficiency, preventing voter fraud, ensuring the count of every vote, and creating finality in the voting system are included in this examination. Throughout this …
Death By A Thousand Signatures: The Rise Of Restrictive Ballot Access Laws And The Decline Of Electoral Competition In The United States, Oliver Hall
Seattle University Law Review
This Article explores one instance of the countermajoritarian problem in American democracy: how to protect the rights of minor parties and independent candidates participating in an electoral system dominated by two major parties. In particular, this Article focuses on the effect of modern ballot access laws on candidates' rights, arguing that courts ought to treat these laws as a presumptively impermissible form of "collusion in restraint of democracy." Although the article borrows the language of antitrust law, this argument is rooted in core constitutional principles and rights guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Nevertheless, the analogy to antitrust law …
Internet Voting With Initiatives And Referendums: Stumbling Towards Direct Democracy, Rebekah K. Browder
Internet Voting With Initiatives And Referendums: Stumbling Towards Direct Democracy, Rebekah K. Browder
Seattle University Law Review
Imagine that it is Tuesday, November 4, 2008, and you realize that you have not yet voted for the candidate that you want to be President of the United States. The polls close at 7 p.m., and it is already 6:45 p.m. Instead of rushing off to the nearest polling place, you simply go to your computer, log in, fill out a ballot, and email your ballot to your designated polling website. The whole process takes fewer than ten minutes, and you have done your civic duty. Leading proponents of Internet voting point to five possible benefits of electronic voting: …