Law Commons^™

What's So Bad About Bush V. Gore? An Essay On Our Unsettled Election, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is a chance that Bush v. Gore may begin a process of laying a more attractive and realistic foundation for constitutionalism than the Official Story provides. The very fact that the Court is not politically independent and that it could not settle the matter in a disinterested, apolitical fashion might set us down a path toward a more mature version of constitutional law. The politically tendentious character of the Coon's reasoning demonstrates that our core constitutional commitments are subject to political manipulation. Ironically, public understanding of this malleability makes our politics more, rather than less, inclusive. It does so …