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Full-Text Articles in Law
Toward A Fundamental Right To Evade Law? Protecting The Rule Of Unequal Racial And Economic Power In Shelby County And State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey
Toward A Fundamental Right To Evade Law? Protecting The Rule Of Unequal Racial And Economic Power In Shelby County And State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey
Journal Articles
To rationalize its ruling on voting rights, Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder develops a constitutional vision of passivity in the face of institutionalized power to violate the law. This essay compares Shelby County to State Farm Mutual Automobile v. Campbell, a 2003 Supreme Court ruling involving a different subject area, state punitive damage awards. In both, the Court asserts newly articulated judicial power to override other branches, not to protect human rights, but rather to expand institutionalized immunity from those rights. On the surface, the Court’s rejection of state sovereignty in State Farm (protecting multistate corporations from high punitive damages) …
Election Law As Applied Democratic Theory, James A. Gardner
Election Law As Applied Democratic Theory, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
Democracy does not implement itself; a society’s commitment to govern itself democratically can be effectuated only through law. Yet as soon as law appears on the scene significant choices must be made concerning the legal structure of democratic institutions. The heart of the study of election law is thus the examination of the choices that our laws make in seeking to structure a workable system of democratic self-rule. In this essay, written for a symposium on Teaching Election Law, I describe how my Election Law course and materials focus on questions of choice in institutional design by emphasizing election law’s …