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Say The Magic Words: Establishing A Historically Informed Standard To Prevent Partisanship From Shielding Racial Gerrymanders From Federal Judicial Review, Emily K. Dalessio
Say The Magic Words: Establishing A Historically Informed Standard To Prevent Partisanship From Shielding Racial Gerrymanders From Federal Judicial Review, Emily K. Dalessio
Washington and Lee Law Review
In its 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court closed the doors of the federal courts to litigants claiming a violation of their constitutional rights based on partisan gerrymandering. In Rucho, the Court held that partisan gerrymandering presents a political question that falls outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts. However, the Supreme Court did not address an insidious consequence of this ruling: namely, that map-drawers may use partisan rationales to obscure what is otherwise an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. This Note uses North Carolina as an example of a state with a long history of …
Politicians As Fiduciaries: Public Law V. Private Law When Altering The Date Of An Election, Steven J. Cleveland
Politicians As Fiduciaries: Public Law V. Private Law When Altering The Date Of An Election, Steven J. Cleveland
Washington and Lee Law Review
In the 2019 decision Rucho v. Common Cause, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that federal challenges to partisan gerrymandering—a practice yielding election results that “reasonably seem unjust”—were non-justiciable. If partisan gerrymandering claims are not federally justiciable, and if that conclusion emboldens politicians, how else might incumbents manipulate election mechanics to preserve their political advantage? This Article explores one possibility that was briefly mentioned by the Rucho majority: the strategic advancement or delay of the date of a federal election. The strategic shift of election day is not simply a theoretical problem. Foreign politicians have strategically altered their election days …
Supreme Court Journalism: From Law To Spectacle?, Barry Sullivan, Cristina Carmody Tilley
Supreme Court Journalism: From Law To Spectacle?, Barry Sullivan, Cristina Carmody Tilley
Washington and Lee Law Review
Few people outside certain specialized sectors of the press and the legal profession have any particular reason to read the increasingly voluminous opinions through which the Justices of the Supreme Court explain their interpretations of the Constitution and laws. Most of what the public knows about the Supreme Court necessarily comes from the press. That fact raises questions of considerable importance to the functioning of our constitutional democracy: How, for example, does the press describe the work of the Supreme Court? And has the way in which the press describes the work of the Court changed over the past several …