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Full-Text Articles in Law
Methodological Gerrymandering, David Simson
Methodological Gerrymandering, David Simson
Cleveland State Law Review
The U.S. Supreme Court has come to decide many of the most consequential and contentious aspects of social policy via its interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. Institutional features of the Court create significant pressure on the Justices to justify their decisions as applications of “law” rather than the practice of “politics.” Their perceived failure to do so calls forth criticism sounding in a variety of registers—ranging from allegations of a lack of neutrality, lack of impartiality, or lack of “principle,” to allegations of opportunism, disingenuousness, and hypocrisy. Analyzing the Justices’ choices in relation to interpretational “methodology”—choosing one lens through which …
The Politicization Of Judicial Elections And Its Effect On Judicial Independence, Matthew W. Green Jr., Susan J. Becker, Marsha K. Ternus, Camilla B. Taylor
The Politicization Of Judicial Elections And Its Effect On Judicial Independence, Matthew W. Green Jr., Susan J. Becker, Marsha K. Ternus, Camilla B. Taylor
Cleveland State Law Review
This article presents the proceedings of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Symposium, The Politicization of Judicial Elections and Its Effect on Judicial Independence and LGBT Rights, held October 21, 2011. The idea for the conference stemmed from the November 2010 Iowa judicial election, in which three justices were voted out of office as a result of joining a unanimous ruling, Varnum v. Brien, that struck down, on equal protection grounds, a state statute limiting marriage rights to heterosexual couples. The conference addresses whether the backlash that occurred in Iowa after the Varnum decision might undermine judicial independence in jurisdictions where …