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Full-Text Articles in Law
Judicial Retention Elections For State Appellate Judges: The Implications Of The Ballot-Access Cases, James Blumstein
Judicial Retention Elections For State Appellate Judges: The Implications Of The Ballot-Access Cases, James Blumstein
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article considers methods by which state appellate court judges are selected. It focuses on the evolution of and rationale for the so-called merit-selection system, a hybrid approach that prevails in a substantial number of jurisdictions. Under merit selection, there is an initial gubernatorial appointment based on recommendations from a nominating committee and a retention election, which is limited to a single candidate and a single question: whether the initially appointed appellate judge should be retained so as to serve a new term. The retention election is a form of election that satisfies states’ requirements that judges be elected. But …
Deliberation Or Tabulation? The Self-Undermining Constitutional Architecture Of Election Campaigns, James A. Gardner
Deliberation Or Tabulation? The Self-Undermining Constitutional Architecture Of Election Campaigns, James A. Gardner
Buffalo Law Review
Perhaps the one completely uncontested truth in the shared public ideology of American politics is that an election campaign ought to be a serious occasion in the life of a democratic polity, a time when citizens reflect maturely on the great public issues of the day. On this view, the ultimate purpose of election campaigns is to offer voters and candidates a meaningful opportunity for deliberation and persuasion. Of course, the typical modern American election campaign does not seem seriously reflective and deliberative so much as shallow and unengaging. Reasoned persuasion seems to play a minor role, if that. The …
The Contested Right To Vote, Richard Briffault
The Contested Right To Vote, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
For those who believe the United States is a representative democracy with a government elected by the people, the events of late 2000must 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 design, …