Law Commons^™

The Messy History Of Michigan’S “Purity Clause”, Joshua Perry

Michigan Law Review Online

So it’s worth asking: What does the Purity Clause actually mean? Can contemporary courts properly invoke it to justify restrictions purportedly aimed at controlling “voter fraud”? Should they?

Part I diagnoses the problem: Recently, Michigan courts have invoked the Purity Clause to legitimize voting rights restrictions without applying their usual tools of constitutional interpretation or scrutinizing the Clause’s complex history. As a result, voting restrictions have been justified by reference to a badly underexamined constitutional provision.

Part II examines the Clause with the tools that Michigan courts use to interpret the state constitution. This Part argues that neither the original …

Gun Safety In The Age Of Kavanaugh, Joseph S. Hartunian

Michigan Law Review Online

This Essay takes stock of the different approaches adopted and advocated for in evaluating constitutional challenges in Second Amendment opinions throughout the country. The author’s hope is that doing so will help highlight the contours for debate when the Supreme Court does finally start to define some of the limits purported to exist by Justice Scalia. Part I analyzes the paths explicitly rejected by Heller I by reviewing the limits considered allowable by Justice Scalia. Part II considers the ongoing debate between the courts on the application of “strict” or “intermediate” scrutiny for Second Amendment challenges. Part III examines then-Judge …

Is Groton The Next Evenwel?, Paul H. Edelman

Michigan Law Review Online

In Evenwel v. Abbott the Supreme Court left open the question of whether states could employ population measures other than total population as a basis for drawing representative districts so as to meet the requirement of "one person, one vote" (OPOV). It was thought that there was little prospect of resolving this question soon as no appropriate instances of such behavior were known. That belief was mistaken. In this Essay I report on the Town of Groton, Connecticut, which uses registered voter data to apportion seats in its Representative Town Meeting and has done so since its incorporation in 1957. …

State Court Litigation: The New Front In The War Against Partisan Gerrymandering, Charlie Stewart

Michigan Law Review Online

Partisan gerrymandering is the process of drafting state and congressional districts in a manner that gives one political party an advantage over another. The end goal is simple: help your party win more seats or protect existing ones. The tactic is as old as the United States. In 1788, Patrick Henry convinced the Virginia state legislature to draw the 5th Congressional District to pit his rival James Madison against James Monroe. The term “gerrymander” itself is a hybrid: in 1810, democratic Governor Gerry signed a partisan redistricting plan into law—one that contained a district that infamously looked like a salamander. …

A Unifying Approach To Nexus Under The Dormant Commerce Clause, Adam B. Thimmesch

Michigan Law Review Online

The Supreme Court has long debated the existence and scope of its power to restrict state regulation under the so-called negative or dormant Commerce Clause. The Court took a broad view of that power in the late 1800s, but it has refined and restricted its role over time. One area where the Court has continued to wield considerable power, however, has been in the context of state taxes. Specifically, the Court has continued to restrict states' power to compel out-of-state vendors to collect their sales and use taxes based on a physical-presence "nexus" rule. That rule dates back to the …

Counting Zeros: The Every Student Succeeds Act And The Testing Opt-Out Movement, Paul A. Hoversten

Michigan Law Review Online

The story begins with threatening letters. In October 2014, the U.S. Department of Education reminded Colorado’s chief state school officer that the department “ha[d], in fact, withheld Title I, Part A administrative funds . . . from a number of States for failure to comply with the assessment requirements” under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Given the occasion, the department implied, it wouldn’t hesitate to be ruthless.

Colorado could be forgiven for assuming it was authorized to craft its own policies in this arena; according to the Wall Street Journal, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represented “the …