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Full-Text Articles in Law

Morgan Kousser's Noble Dream, Heather K. Gerken May 2001

Morgan Kousser's Noble Dream, Heather K. Gerken

Michigan Law Review

J. Morgan Kousser, professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology, is an unusual academic. He enjoys the respect of two quite different groups - historians and civil rights litigators. As a historian, Kousser has written a number of important works on the American South in the tradition of his mentor, C. Vann Woodward, including a foundational book on southern political history, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910. Many of his writings have become seminal texts among election law scholars. Kousser has also used his historical skills …


An Assessment Of The 2000 Fourth Congressional District Race, Amber E. Wilson Jan 2001

An Assessment Of The 2000 Fourth Congressional District Race, Amber E. Wilson

Honors Theses

Prior to the November 7 election, incumbent Republican Jay Dickey aspired to maintain his eight-year hold on the fourth congressional district seat, while challenger, Mike Ross, a Democratic State Senator, had high hopes for a partisan restoration. In the end, Ross upset the incumbent carrying 51 percent of the 212,160 votes cast, a narrow 4, 126-vote margin. This paper assesses the strategic, tactical, and fiscal factors contributing to Ross's success in overriding incumbency advantages and reclaiming the seat for the Democrats. More specifically, it compares and contrasts candidate and noncandidate communications. Indeed, communication was the key component to these coordinated …


Federalism, Preclearance, And The Rehnquist Court, Ellen D. Katz Jan 2001

Federalism, Preclearance, And The Rehnquist Court, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Lopez v. Monterey County is an odd decision. Justice O'Connor's majority opinion easily upholds the constitutionality of a broad construction of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in language reminiscent of the Warren Court. Acknowledging the "substantial 'federalism costs" resulting from the VRA's "federal intrusion into sensitive areas of state and local policymaking," Lopez recognizes that the Reconstruction Amendments "contemplate" this encroachment into realms "traditionally reserved to the States." Justice O'Connor affirms as constitutionally permissible the infringement that the section 5 preclearance process "by its nature" effects on state sovereignty, and applies section 5 broadly, holding the statute …