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Articles 1 - 30 of 86
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Separation Of Voting And Control: The Role Of Contract In Corporate Governance, Gabriel V. Rauterberg
The Separation Of Voting And Control: The Role Of Contract In Corporate Governance, Gabriel V. Rauterberg
Articles
The default rules of corporate law make shareholders’ control rights a function of their voting power. Whether a director is elected or a merger is approved depends on how shareholders vote. Yet, in private corporations shareholders routinely alter their rights by contract. This phenomenon of shareholder agreements—contracts among the owners of a firm— has received far less attention than it deserves, mainly because detailed data about the actual contents of shareholder agreements has been lacking. Private companies disclose little, and shareholder agreements are thought to play a trivial or nonexistent role in public companies. I show that this is false—fifteen …
Ranked-Choice Voting As Reprieve From The Court-Ordered Map, Benjamin P. Lempert
Ranked-Choice Voting As Reprieve From The Court-Ordered Map, Benjamin P. Lempert
Michigan Law Review
Thus far, legal debates about the rise of ranked-choice voting have centered on whether legislatures can lawfully adopt the practice. This Note turns attention to the courts and the question of remedies. It proposes that courts impose ranked-choice voting as a redistricting remedy. Ranked-choice voting allows courts to cure redistricting violations without also requiring that they draw copious numbers of districts, a process the Supreme Court has described as a “political thicket.” By keeping courts away from the fact-specific, often arbitrary judgments involved in redistricting, ranked-choice voting makes for the redistricting remedy that best protects the integrity of the judicial …
Eight Months Later, Ellen D. Katz
Eight Months Later, Ellen D. Katz
Reviews
Rick Hasen’s Election Meltdown provides a concise and scathing analysis of what ails the American electoral process. Rick identifies four “principal dangers”—namely, voter suppression, “pockets of incompetence” in election administration, “dirty tricks,” and “incendiary rhetoric” about stolen or rigged elections. He argues that these dangers have contributed to past dysfunctional elections and are sure to infect future ones. Election Meltdown closes with some proposals to temper the identified dangers so as to make voting less difficult and restore confidence in the electoral process.
Voting By Mail: Issues And Resources, Virginia A. Neisler
Voting By Mail: Issues And Resources, Virginia A. Neisler
Law Librarian Scholarship
As the world navigates the worst pandemic in living memory, America has been faced with the prospect of holding a federal presidential election amid a public health crisis. In the spring of 2020, when the coronavirus began to spread rapidly in the United States, election officials in many states opted to extend absentee voting deadlines or postpone elections altogether to reduce the risk of disease transmission. In anticipation of a resurgence of COVID-19 in the fall, the scheduled November election has caused concern for many officials who have searched for potential solutions to make the upcoming presidential election safer.
Thin And Thick Conceptions Of The Nineteenth Amendment Right To Vote And Congress's Power To Enforce It, Richard L. Hasen, Leah M. Litman
Thin And Thick Conceptions Of The Nineteenth Amendment Right To Vote And Congress's Power To Enforce It, Richard L. Hasen, Leah M. Litman
Articles
This Article, prepared for a Georgetown Law Journal symposium on the Nineteenth Amendment’s one-hundred-year anniversary, explores and defends a “thick” conception of the Nineteenth Amendment right to vote and Congress’s power to enforce it. A “thin” conception of the Nineteenth Amendment maintains that the Amendment merely prohibits states from enacting laws that prohibit women from voting once the state decides to hold an election. And a “thin” conception of Congress’s power to enforce the Nineteenth Amendment maintains that Congress may only supply remedies for official acts that violate the Amendment’s substantive guarantees. This Article argues the Nineteenth Amendment does more. …
Golden Parachutes And The Limits Of Shareholder Voting, Albert H. Choi, Andrew C.W. Lund, Robert Schonlau
Golden Parachutes And The Limits Of Shareholder Voting, Albert H. Choi, Andrew C.W. Lund, Robert Schonlau
Articles
With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, Congress attempted to constrain change-in-control payments (also known as “golden parachutes”) by giving shareholders the right to approve or disapprove such payments on an advisory basis. This Essay is the first to empirically examine the experience with the Say-on-Golden-Parachute (“SOGP”) vote. We find that unlike shareholder votes on proposed mergers, there is a significant amount of variation with respect to votes on golden parachutes. Notwithstanding the variation, however, the SOGP voting regime is likely ineffective in controlling golden parachute (“GP”) compensation. First, proxy advisors seem …
Is Groton The Next Evenwel?, Paul H. Edelman
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. …
Do Institutional Owners Monitor? Evidence From Voting On Connected Transaction Proposals In Hong Kong-Listed Companies, Félix E. Mezzanotte, Simon Fung
Do Institutional Owners Monitor? Evidence From Voting On Connected Transaction Proposals In Hong Kong-Listed Companies, Félix E. Mezzanotte, Simon Fung
Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review
The conventional view in Hong Kong has been that institutional owners tend to be passive owners and that they do little to monitor the companies’ management. We investigated whether the presence of institutional owners in Hong Kong-listed companies was associated with greater monitoring of management through dissent voting by hand-collecting information for a sample (n= 96) of connected transaction proposals (“CT proposals”) and of their voting outcomes, as announced in the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong during the period from 2012–14. Our study shows that voting approval rates on CT proposals were lower (i.e. greater dissent voting) when institutional owners …
Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz
Section 2 After Section 5: Voting Rights And The Race To The Bottom, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
Five years ago, Shelby County v. Holder released nine states and fifty-five smaller jurisdictions from the preclearance obligation set forth in section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). This obligation mandated that places with a history of discrimination in voting obtain federal approval—known as preclearance—before changing any electoral rule or procedure. Within hours of the Shelby County decision, jurisdictions began moving to reenact measures section 5 had specifically blocked. Others pressed forward with new rules that the VRA would have barred prior to Shelby County.
Gerrymandering And The Constitutional Norm Against Government Partisanship, Michael S. Kang
Gerrymandering And The Constitutional Norm Against Government Partisanship, Michael S. Kang
Michigan Law Review
This Article challenges the basic premise in the law of gerrymandering that partisanship is a constitutional government purpose at all. The central problem, Justice Scalia once explained in Vieth v. Jubilerer, is that partisan gerrymandering becomes unconstitutional only when it “has gone too far,” giving rise to the intractable inquiry into “how much is too much.” But the premise that partisanship is an ordinary and lawful purpose, articulated confidently as settled law and widely understood as such, is largely wrong as constitutional doctrine. The Article surveys constitutional law to demonstrate the vitality of an important, if implicit norm against …
Blacklining Editorial Privilege, Justin Hurwitz
Blacklining Editorial Privilege, Justin Hurwitz
Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review
Over the past year, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly has drawn valuable attention to various Commission procedures in need of reform. Of these procedures perhaps the most perplexing is that of “editorial privileges” – a process whereby Commission staff is granted permission to continue editing Commission Orders subsequent to their adoption, such that the text of the Order voted on by the Commission is not necessarily the same as that ultimately published in the Federal Register or otherwise released to the public. This procedure is longstanding – predating institutional memory; yet it is also entirely unprecedented in the canon of administrative …
Justice Ginsburg's Umbrella, Ellen D. Katz
Justice Ginsburg's Umbrella, Ellen D. Katz
Book Chapters
Near the end of her dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, Justice Ginsburg suggested a simple analogy to illustrate why the regional protections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) were still necessary. She wrote that “[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Enforcing The Fifteenth Amendment, Ellen D. Katz
Enforcing The Fifteenth Amendment, Ellen D. Katz
Book Chapters
This chapter examines efforts to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment in the period from United States v. Reese through Shelby County v. Holder. Reese and Shelby County expose the most rigorous stance the Court has employed to review congressional efforts to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment, while the years in-between show Congress and the Court working more in tandem, at times displaying remarkable indifference to blatant violations of the Fifteenth Amendment, and elsewhere working cooperatively to help vindicate the Amendment’s promise. Defying simple explanation, this vacillation between cooperation and resistance captures the complex and deeply consequential way concerns about federal power, …
Dismissing Deterrence, Ellen D. Katz
Dismissing Deterrence, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
The proposed Voting Rights Amendment Act of 20144 (VRAA)[...]’s new criteria defining when jurisdictions become subject to preclearance are acutely responsive to the concerns articulated in Shelby County[ v. Holder]. The result is a preclearance regime that, if enacted, would operate in fewer places and demand less from those it regulates. This new regime, however, would not only be more targeted and less powerful, but, curiously, more vulnerable to challenge. In fact, the regime would be more vulnerable precisely because it is so responsive to Shelby County. Some background will help us see why.
Universalism And Civil Rights (With Notes On Voting Rights After Shelby), Samuel R. Bagenstos
Universalism And Civil Rights (With Notes On Voting Rights After Shelby), Samuel R. Bagenstos
Articles
After the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder, voting rights activists proposed a variety of legislative responses. Some proposals sought to move beyond measures that targeted voting discrimination based on race or ethnicity. They instead sought to eliminate certain problematic practices that place too great a burden on voting generally. Responses like these are universalist, because rather than seeking to protect any particular group against discrimination, they formally provide uniform protections to everyone. As Bruce Ackerman shows, voting rights activists confronted a similar set of questions—and at least some of them opted for a universalist approach—during the campaign …
Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz
Election Law's Lochnerian Turn, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
This panel has been asked to consider whether "the Constitution [is] responsible for electoral dysfunction."' My answer is no. The electoral process undeniably falls well short of our aspirations, but it strikes me that we should look to the Supreme Court for an accounting before blaming the Constitution for the deeply unsatisfactory condition in which we find ourselves.
South Carolina's 'Evolutionary Process', Ellen D. Katz
South Carolina's 'Evolutionary Process', Ellen D. Katz
Articles
When Congress first enacted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965, public officials in South Carolina led the charge to scrap the new statute. Their brief to the Supreme Court of the United States described the VRA as an “unjustified” and “arbitrary” affront to the “Equality of Statehood” principle, and a “usurp[ation]” of the State’s legislative and executive functions. Not surprisingly, the Warren Court was unpersuaded and opted instead to endorse broad congressional power to craft “inventive” remedies to address systematic racial discrimination and to “shift the advantage of time and inertia from the perpetrators of evil to its victims.” …
Shelby County V. Holder: Why Section 2 Matters, Ellen D. Katz
Shelby County V. Holder: Why Section 2 Matters, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
Editor’s Note: Professor Ellen D. Katz writes and teaches about election law, civil rights and remedies, and equal protection. She and the Voting Rights Initiative at Michigan Law filed a brief as amicus curiae in Shelby County v. Holder, on which the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments February 27. Here, she examines why Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bears consideration in the case, which involves a challenge to Section 5 of the act.
A Cure Worse Than The Disease?, Ellen D. Katz
A Cure Worse Than The Disease?, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
The pending challenge to section 5 of the Voting Rights Act insists the statute is no longer necessary. Should the Supreme Court agree, its ruling is likely to reflect the belief that section 5 is not only obsolete but that its requirements do more harm today than the condition it was crafted to address. In this Essay, Professor Ellen D. Katz examines why the Court might liken section 5 to a destructive treatment and why reliance on that analogy in the pending case threatens to leave the underlying condition unaddressed and Congress without the power to address it.
What Was Wrong With The Record?, Ellen D. Katz
What Was Wrong With The Record?, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
Shelby County v. Holder offers three reasons for why the record Congress amassed to support the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was legally insufficient to justify the statute's continued regional application: (1) the problems Congress documented in 2006 were not as severe as those that prompted it to craft the regime in 1965; (2) these problems did not lead Congress to alter the statute's pre-existing coverage formula; and (3) these problems did not exclusively involve voter registration and the casting of ballots.
Increasing Youth Participation: The Case For A National Voter Pre-Registration Law, Ceridwen Cherry
Increasing Youth Participation: The Case For A National Voter Pre-Registration Law, Ceridwen Cherry
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Lagging youth participation rates threaten participatory democracy and undermine the representation of young people's interests in elected government. However, the percentage of registered youth who actually cast ballots is very high. The correlation between registration and actual voter participation suggests that when given assistance and greater opportunities to register, young citizens will vote. This Note proposes a national pre-registration law that would allow voter registration to begin at age sixteen. Such a law would be feasible, constitutional, and politically viable and may increase not only the voter participation of young people, but also the socioeconomic diversity of the electorate.
Democrats At Doj: Why Partisan Use Of The Voting Rights Act Might Not Be So Bad After All, Ellen D. Katz
Democrats At Doj: Why Partisan Use Of The Voting Rights Act Might Not Be So Bad After All, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
In notable ways, the ongoing dispute over redistricting in Texas offers a mirror image to one of the major redistricting battles of the last decade, only with Democratic and Republican roles reversed. In both Texas v. United States and Georgia v. Ashcroft, a state attorney general (AG) decided he would not ask the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to approve new redistricting plans enacted in his state. In both cases, the state AGs were well aware that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) required them to obtain federal approval, known as preclearance, before changing any aspect of their state's election …
On Overreaching, Or Why Rick Perry May Save The Voting Rights Act But Destroy Affirmative Action, Ellen D. Katz
On Overreaching, Or Why Rick Perry May Save The Voting Rights Act But Destroy Affirmative Action, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
The State of Texas is presently staking out two positions that are not typically pursued by a single litigant. On the one hand, Texas is seeking the invalidation of the Voting Rights Act, and, on the other, the State is now defending the validity of the expansive race-based affirmative action policy it uses at its flagship university. This Essay presses the claim that Texas has increased the chance it will lose in bothTexas v. Holder andFisher v. University of Texas because it has opted to stake out markedly extreme positions in each. I argue that Texas would be more likely …
What Do We Want In A Presidential Primary - An Election Law Perspective, Chad Flanders
What Do We Want In A Presidential Primary - An Election Law Perspective, Chad Flanders
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Although the 2008 presidential primaries were in many ways a resounding success in terms of turnout, attention, and sheer excitement, many noted the pressing need for reform. States were rushing to hold their primaries sooner than ever, giving rise to "Super-Duper Tuesday," where twenty-four states had their primaries on the same day. The Democratic nominee at one point looked like it might be decided by the votes of so-called "Superdelegates"-party regulars beholden to no one. As the Democratic nomination contest wore on, Rush Limbaugh, in "Operation Chaos," encouraged his "dittoheads" to raid the party primaries of the Democrats, tilting the …
Voting As Veto, Michael S. Kang
Voting As Veto, Michael S. Kang
Michigan Law Review
This Article introduces an alternate conception of voting as vetobased on "negative preferences" against a voter's least preferred outcomes-that enriches voting theory and practice otherwise dominated by a conception of voting as a means of expressing a voter's ideal preferences. Indeed, the familiar binary choices presented in American political elections obscure the pervasiveness of negative preferences, which are descriptively salient in voting under all types of circumstances. Negative preferences have been overlooked, despite their theoretical and practical importance across many domains, leaving important questions unexplored in the literature. The Article develops a normative and positive account of voting as veto …
Poll Workers, Election Administration, And The Problem Of Implicit Bias, Antony Page, Michael J. Pitts
Poll Workers, Election Administration, And The Problem Of Implicit Bias, Antony Page, Michael J. Pitts
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Racial bias in election administration-more specifically, in the interaction between poll workers and voters at a polling place on election day-may be implicit, or unconscious. Indeed, the operation of a polling place may present an "optimal" setting for unconscious racial bias. Poll workers sometimes have legal discretion to decide whether or not a prospective voter gets to cast a ballot, and they operate in an environment where they may have to make quick decisions, based on little information, with few concrete incentives for accuracy, and with little opportunity to learn from their errors. Even where the letter of the law …
Withdrawal: The Roberts Court And The Retreat From Election Law, Ellen D. Katz
Withdrawal: The Roberts Court And The Retreat From Election Law, Ellen D. Katz
Articles
Last Term the Supreme Court handed down four decisions that upheld diverse efforts by state governments to regulate the electoral process. The Court turned back challenges to New York’s method for nominating judicial candidates, Washington’s modified blanket primary system, Indiana’s voter identification requirement, and Alabama’s use of gubernatorial appointment to fill county commission vacancies in Mobile County. Unlike other recent election decisions, these were not close cases. All nine Justices supported the New York holding, while supermajorities voted in favor of the result in the others. This consensus, moreover, emerged even as the Court voted to reverse unanimous decisions by …
Equal Voice By Half Measures, John Mark Hansen
Equal Voice By Half Measures, John Mark Hansen
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
In democratic theory, the ballot is the most perfect expression of the democratic commitment to the moral equality of persons. Every citizen, whether old or young, rich or poor, sophisticated or simple, enjoys the same endowment in an election: a single vote. The ballot not only gives citizens their voice in government, it also makes their voices equal. In practice, however, democracies have erected all sorts of impediments to the ideal of equal voice, such as restrictions on suffrage, legislative malapportionments, and discriminatory gerrymanders. Among the most egregious impediments, however, are surely the systems of indirect election purported to filter …
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Three Proposals To Introduce The Nationwide Popular Vote In U.S. Presidential Elections, Alexander S. Belenky
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Three Proposals To Introduce The Nationwide Popular Vote In U.S. Presidential Elections, Alexander S. Belenky
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The idea of reforming the Electoral College recurs each time a presidential election nears. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of respondents support abolishing the Electoral College in favor of direct popular election of the President. Yet, it is doubtful whether these polls really imply that such a move would be best for the country. Despite the seeming simplicity of direct popular presidential election, its introduction in the United States—a country in which the clear separation of powers between the states and the federal government has existed for more than two centuries—would have hidden drawbacks that the media and pollsters …
Reforming The Electorial College One State At A Time, Thomas W. Hiltachk
Reforming The Electorial College One State At A Time, Thomas W. Hiltachk
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The genius of our United States Constitution is the delicate balance our Founding Fathers struck between empowering a national government and preserving the inherent sovereignty of individual states. Any proposed governmental reform that would interfere with that balance should be looked upon skeptically. Recent proposals to do away with the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote for President deserve such careful examination. But that does not mean that reform is out of reach. We have only to look to the Constitution itself to find that the answer lies in the self-interest of each state. I am an …