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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Faithless Elector And 2016: Constitutional Uncertainty After The Election Of Donald Trump, Alexander Gouzoules
The Faithless Elector And 2016: Constitutional Uncertainty After The Election Of Donald Trump, Alexander Gouzoules
Faculty Publications
Presidential electors are generally expected to vote for the candidate who won their state's election, and those who do not are referred to as "faithless electors." A majority of states have laws of varying types that bind their electors to vote for the winning presidential candidate. The 2016 election, for the first time in modern history, produced a serious movement urging electors to cast faithless votes against Donald Trump. Although this movement was not successful, 2016 saw the most faithless electors in recent history by a large margin. Three separate, ultimately unsuccessful, lawsuits were filed by would-be faithless electors in …
The Transformative Twelfth Amendment, Joshua D. Hawley
The Transformative Twelfth Amendment, Joshua D. Hawley
Faculty Publications
This paper argues that the Twelfth Amendment represents far more than a mechanical adjustment of the electoral college. Rather, it is the constitutional text that gives us the political presidency that we know today. The Twelfth Amendment worked a major structural change in the relationship between the legislative and executive branches and for that reason bears directly on the debate over the unitary executive and the meaning of “executive power.” Specifically, presidential removal power is best justified not by the original Article II, but by the constitutional structure the Twelfth Amendment created. And the scope and definition of executive power …
The Democratic Legitimacy Of Government-Related Dispute Resolution, Richard C. Reuben
The Democratic Legitimacy Of Government-Related Dispute Resolution, Richard C. Reuben
Faculty Publications
The elective branches get most of the attention when we think about democracy. But it's important to remember that one of the things that a democratic government provides is a number of structures by which disputes may be resolved peacefully. Indeed, voting itself is one way of resolving conflict at a societal level. In the United States, courts historically have been the starting point for the resolution of individual, and sometimes social, disputes. Courts would seem to exude a great deal of democratic legitimacy, but why, and under what conditions? And what about other methods of dispute resolution: How do …
Understanding Congressional Reform: Lessons From The Seventies, Rafael Gely, Asghar Zardkoohi
Understanding Congressional Reform: Lessons From The Seventies, Rafael Gely, Asghar Zardkoohi
Faculty Publications
The purpose of this article is to examine voting behavior of representatives when faced with dual constraints (constituents back home and the leadership) as compared to one constraint (constituents back home). An ambitious goal of the study would have been to examine the effects of both sets of reforms. However, there are two reasons for not using the 1995 reforms in our empirical examinations. First, not enough time has passed to fully observe the effect of term limits on voting behavior. Second, and more importantly, the leadership, whose power it was to impose a constraint on a representative's promotional opportunities, …
Heading Back To The Thicket, Richard C. Reuben
Heading Back To The Thicket, Richard C. Reuben
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Anonymous Campaign Literature And The First Amendment, Erika Lietzan
Anonymous Campaign Literature And The First Amendment, Erika Lietzan
Faculty Publications
Presently, forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have statutes that require the disclosure of some party's identity (for example, an author or a sponsor) on political literature pertaining to elections. The most common explanations given for these statutes are that they deter fraud and libel in the election arena and that they provide valuable information to the voters. Because these statutes regulate core political speech, however, they necessarily implicate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Although campaign disclosure laws have been both struck down and sustained by state courts reviewing appealed convictions, the decisions have been disappointingly …