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Undue Deference To States In The 2020 Election Litigation, Joshua A. Douglas

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on so much of our lives, including how to run our elections. Yet the federal courts have refused to respond appropriately to the dilemma that many voters faced when trying to participate in the 2020 election. Instead, the courts—particularly the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal appellate courts—invoked a narrow test that unduly defers to state election administration and fails to protect adequately the fundamental right to vote.

In constitutional litigation, a law usually must satisfy a two-part test: (1) does the state have an appropriate reason for the law and (2) is the law properly …

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Paternalism, Tolerance, And Acceptance: Modeling The Evolution Of Equal Protection In The Constitutional Canon, John Tehranian

William & Mary Law Review

This Article proposes a legal taxonomy through which we can model changes in interpretations and applications of antidiscrimination principles to best understand the evolution of equal protection doctrine. The goal for doing so is two-fold. First, through a careful exegesis of a wide range of equal protection cases from the past hundred and fifty years, the analysis provides a positive theory to chart how respect for minority rights can progress within a given doctrinal space. Second, the analysis provides an unabashedly normative assessment of how closely a given legal regime comes to accepting and celebrating the inherent dignitary interests of …

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