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Full-Text Articles in Law
Hands Off Policy: Equal Protection And The Contact Sports Exemption Of Title Ix, Jamal Greene
Hands Off Policy: Equal Protection And The Contact Sports Exemption Of Title Ix, Jamal Greene
Faculty Scholarship
Before becoming a poster child for gender equity in athletics, Heather Sue Mercer was an all-state place kicker at Yorktown Heights High School in Yorktown Heights, New York (pop. 7,972). She enrolled at Duke University in the fall of 1994 and decided to become the first woman ever to try out for the Duke football team. Initially she failed to make the team as a walk-on, but the following spring she was invited by the seniors on the team to play in the annual Blue-White scrimmage. She ended up kicking a game-winning twenty-eight-yard field goal. Afterwards, Duke head coach Fred …
Judging Partisan Gerrymanders Under The Elections Clause, Jamal Greene
Judging Partisan Gerrymanders Under The Elections Clause, Jamal Greene
Faculty Scholarship
Twice in the last two decades, the Supreme Court has come within two votes of declaring partisan gerrymandering – the manipulation of district lines for partisan ends – a nonjusticiable political question. Last Term, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, Pennsylvania Democrats challenged an alleged Republican gerrymander of the state's congressional districts. Four members of the Court thought the question nonjusticiable, and one, Justice Kennedy, thought it justiciable under the Equal Protection Clause but nonetheless rejected the plaintiffs claims. Eighteen years earlier, in Davis v. Bandemer, a three-Justice plurality had held that a political group complaining of partisan gerrymandering – the Democratic …
Defining The Constitutional Question In Partisan Gerrymandering, Richard Briffault
Defining The Constitutional Question In Partisan Gerrymandering, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Vieth v. Jubelirer is a significant setback to efforts to challenge partisan gerrymandering in court. Four members of the Supreme Court repudiated Davis v. Bandemer and concluded that partisan gerrymanders present a nonjusticiable question, while the fifth, Justice Kennedy, determined that the Court ought to "refrain from intervention" at this time, although he left open the hope that gerrymandering might become justiciable if the right standard of proving a gerrymander is ever found. Yet, strikingly, all nine members of the Supreme Court agreed that, justiciable or not, partisan gerrymanders do raise a constitutional question and some partisan gerrymanders are unconstitutional. …