Election Law Commons^™

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

The Unabridged Fifteenth Amendment, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the legal histories of Reconstruction, the Fifteenth Amendment’s drafting and ratification is an afterthought compared to the Fourteenth Amendment. This oversight is perplexing given that the Fifteenth Amendment ushered in a brief period of multi-racial democracy and laid the constitutional foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This Article helps to complete the historical record and provides a thorough accounting of the Fifteenth Amendment’s text, history, and purpose.

This Article situates the Fifteenth Amendment within the broad array of constitutional provisions, federal statutes, fundamental conditions, and state laws that enfranchised—and disenfranchised—Black men during Reconstruction. This Article then performs …

Oral Argument In Moore V. Harper And The Perils Of Finding “Compromise” On The Independent State Legislature Theory, Katherine A. Shaw

Online Publications

The Supreme Court’s cert grant last June in Moore v. Harper was an ominous note on which to end an explosive term. The grant seemed to broadcast an openness to embracing what’s known as the “independent state legislature theory,” or ISLT. It is a once-fringe idea that the U.S. Constitution, and in particular Article I’s “elections clause,” grants to state legislatures alone, and withholds from other state entities (think: courts and constitutions), the power to regulate elections for federal office.

An Anniversary Best Uncelebrated: The 75th Year Of The Presidential Succession Act Of 1947, Roy E. Brownell Ii, John Rogan

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

On July 18, 1947, President Harry Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act into law. The 1947 Act placed the Speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tempore in the presidential line of succession. Seventy-five years later, the statute needs major revision. Although the 1947 Act has not been used, the nation’s good fortune may change at any moment, especially given ever-present threats to the health and safety of the president and vice president.

This Article argues that Congress should revise the 1947 law in several ways, most notably by making Cabinet secretaries, in most circumstances, the immediate successors …

Increasing Voter Investment In American Democracy: Proposals For Reform, Adam Drake

Fordham Law Voting Rights and Democracy Forum

Millions of Americans choose to stay home every election cycle. Polling suggests that these nonvoters are either apathetic with respect to the democratic process or feel alienated from the United States government. Reforms to the democratic system should focus on alleviating these sentiments, ultimately encouraging more voters to show up to the polls. As turnout increases, so too does the legitimacy and stability of the U.S. government.

With that goal in mind, this Article advocates for a five- prong approach to reforming the electoral system. The first proposed step is to eliminate unnecessary barriers to voting by establishing federal automatic …

Textualism, Judicial Supremacy, And The Independent State Legislature Theory, Leah M. Litman, Katherine A. Shaw

Articles

This piece offers an extended critique of one aspect of the so-called "independent state legislature" theory. That theory, in brief, holds that the federal Constitution gives state legislatures, and withholds from any other state entity, the power to regulate federal elections. Proponents ground their theory in two provisions of the federal Constitution: Article I's Elections Clause, which provides that "[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof," and Article H's Presidential Electors Clause, which provides that "[e]ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature …

Bizwayo Newton Nkunika V Lawrence Nyirenda And Electoral Commission Of Zambia 2019/Ccz/005 (1 March 2021), O'Brien Kaaba

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

Brief For Amicus Curiae Professor Derek T. Muller In Support Of Respondents, Daniel M. Sullivan, Daniel M. Horowitz, Derek T. Muller

Court Briefs

No. 21-1271
Timothy K. Moore v. Rebecca Harper

On Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of North Carolina

From the Summary of Argument

The petition for certiorari in this case presents the question whether the phrase “Legislature thereof” in the Elections Clause of the Constitution bars state courts from regulating the contours of Congressional redistricting pursuant to state constitutions. But Congress has spoken, too. It has regulated the manner of drawing congressional districts by federal statute. See 2 U.S.C. § 2c. Congressional redistricting in a State now takes place pursuant to this federal statutory directive, which contemplates a role …

More On The Varying Meanings Of “Congress” And “Legislature”, Michael Herz

Online Publications

In a recent Election Law Blog post regarding the Independent State Legislature doctrine, Rick Pildes observes that the term “Congress” in the U.S. Constitution sometimes means Congress acting alone and sometimes means Congress acting through legislation. Given that, it makes perfect sense that the term “legislature” can also sometimes mean the one and sometimes the other. I agree. This post just expands the intratextual analysis.

Why The President Should Remain Commander In Chief Of The D.C. National Guard, Christopher F. Melling

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

A New Supreme Court Case Threatens Another Body Blow To Our Democracy, Katherine A. Shaw, Leah Litman, Carolyn Shapiro

Online Publications

When the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, the justices in the majority insisted they were merely returning the issue of abortion to the democratic process. But a case the court has announced it will hear in its October term could make that democratic process a lot less democratic.

Brief Of Professor Derek T. Muller As Amici Curiae In Support Of No Party, Michael Francisco, Michael A. Brody, Derek T. Muller

Court Briefs

No. 22-11299
Marjorie Taylor Greene v. Secretary of State for the State of Georgia

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
No. 1:22-cv-01294-AT

From the Summary of Argument

Appellees present an issue that seeks something unprecedented: that this Court be the first federal appeals court in history to approve the State’s power to disqualify a congressional candidate. But States lack the power to exclude a congressional candidate from the ballot over a qualification that a candidate might ultimately meet when she presents her credentials to Congress. The district court’s decision should be reversed.

Returning The House Of Representatives To The People: An Apportionment Amendment Proposal Advocating For The Cube Root Rule, Michael Didomenico

Et Cetera

Since the approval of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, the number of representatives in the United States House of Representatives has been capped at 435. While the “People’s House” has seen no growth since 1929, the United States population has nearly tripled since that time to 332 million people in 2022. Without additional representatives to accommodate this larger population, Americans have diluted voting power, representatives are more distant from the constituents they supposedly represent, partisanship stonewalls any productive legislation from being passed, an imbalanced Electoral College clouds the will of the people in selecting their president, and a lack …

Deterioration Of The Tenth Amendment: Why Federalism’S Hierarchy Must Be Restored, Giana Depaul

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

"A Mystifying And Distorting Factor": The Electoral College And American Democracy, Katherine A. Shaw

Articles

A Review of Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College. By Jesse Wegman.

The Ghost Of John Hart Ely, Ryan D. Doerfler, Samuel Moyn

Vanderbilt Law Review

The ghost of John Hart Ely haunts the American liberal constitutional imagination. Despite the failure long ago of any progressive constitutional vision in an increasingly conservative Supreme Court, Ely’s conjectures about the superiority of judges relative to legislatures in the protection of minorities and the policing of the democratic process remain second nature. Indeed, they have been credible enough among liberals to underwrite an anxious or even hostile attitude toward judicial reform. In order to exorcise Ely’s ghost and lay it to rest, this Article challenges his twin conjectures. First, the Article argues that there is little historical and no …

The Territorial And District Representation Amendment: A Proposal, Colin P.A. Jones

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

This article will propose and explain a draft amendment to the United States Constitution that would secure an intermediate degree of political representation for Americans living in U.S. territories. While concerned principally with U.S. territories, the amendment would also address Congressional representation for the District of Columbia.

Texas Disenfranchisement Of Felons, Michelle Baker

Quest

Policy Research Project

Research in progress for GOVT 2306: Honors Texas Government

Faculty Mentor: Tiffany Cartwright, Ph.D.

Michelle Baker wrote the following research paper as an assignment for my online GOVT 2306: Honors Texas Government class during the Fall 2020 semester. The class assignment helps students begin to formulate a classic policy paper, in which alternative policy options are discussed and analyzed, ultimately leading to a preferred policy option. Students submitted just a few paragraphs of the paper at a time over the course of the fall semester before finally pulling everything together in one cohesive research paper. As Michelle’s …

Mail-In Voting And The Pennsylvania Constitution, Stephen E. Friedman

Duquesne Law Review

Pennsylvania was at the center of many of the disputes that arose after the hotly contested 2020 presidential election. One of the most significant challenges was a claim that Pennsylvania's newly enacted mail-in voting law violated the state's constitution. Plaintiffs in one lawsuit asked that all mail-in ballots be discarded, which would have shifted Pennsylvania's electoral votes to Donald Trump. When this lawsuit failed, challengers unsuccessfully objected to Congress counting Pennsylvania's electoral votes. A core argument both in court and in Congress was that the Pennsylvania Constitution requires in-person voting except where it specifically provides otherwise. The claim is supported …

Standardizing State Vote-By-Mail Deadlines In Federal Elections, Jason Nagel

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

The litigation over the vote-by-mail process during the 2020 general election revealed that absentee ballot voting disputes should not be left entirely to the courts. Rather, this Note argues that Congress should utilize its constitutional Elections Clause power to standardize federal vote-by-mail processes, and proposes specific elements that Congress should include in such legislation.

Requiring Majority Winners For Congressional Elections: Harnessing Federalism To Combat Extremism, Edward B. Foley

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Congress should enact a law requiring a candidate for a seat in Congress to receive a majority of votes in order to win the election. Congress should let states determine what particular procedure to use to determine whether a candidate wins a majority, as there are significantly different methods of identifying a majority winner. While this simple piece of legislation might seem inconsequential—many Americans assume, erroneously, that elections already require majority winners—it in fact would cause states to undertake a form of experimentation in the details of electoral system design that would have the effect of counteracting the threat that …

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

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the numerous election law cases that the Supreme Court and the federal appellate courts decided in the lead up to the 2020 election. The picture is bleak. Instead of protecting the constitutional right to vote, the Supreme Court and lower federal appeals courts unduly deferred to state legislatures in how to run the election, with little concern for the difficulties voters faced during a pandemic. If the courts do not alter their jurisprudence, then the only solution may be robust federal legislation or a constitutional amendment that enshrines the right to vote …

Presidential Election Reform: A Current National Imperative, Mark Bohnerst, Reed Hundt, Kate E. Morrow, Aviam Soifer

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article suggests several important practical reforms in how we choose our President and Vice President. It first identifies problems with the Electoral College system, and proposes solutions that would not require a constitutional amendment. The Article also discusses how the long-forgotten provisions of Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment authorize reduction in the electoral votes from states whose legislatures deprive or abridge the right of the people to vote for their presidential electors. By exploring the history and language of Section 2, this Article demonstrates that it was ratified with the specific purpose of preventing state legislatures from usurping …

Gender, Voting Rights, And The Nineteenth Amendment, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

One hundred years after the woman suffrage amendment became part of the United States Constitution, a federal court has held—for the first time—that a plaintiff must establish intentional discrimination to prevail on a direct constitutional claim under the Nineteenth Amendment. In adopting that threshold standard, the court simply reasoned by strict textual analogy to the Fifteenth Amendment and asserted that “there is no reason to read the Nineteenth Amendment differently from the Fifteenth Amendment.” This paper’s thesis is that, to the contrary, the Nineteenth Amendment is deserving of judicial analysis independent of the Fifteenth Amendment because it has a distinct …

The Electoral Count Mess: The Electoral Count Act Of 1887 Is Unconstitutional, And Other Fun Facts (Plus A Few Random Academic Speculations) About Counting Electoral Votes, Jack Beermann, Gary Lawson

FIU Law Review

In this essay, and in light of the controversy that arose in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, we explain the constitutional process for counting electoral votes. In short, every four years, the Twelfth Amendment requires the President of the Senate (usually the Vice President of the United States) to open certificates provided by state presidential electors and count the votes contained therein. The Constitution allows no role for Congress in this process, and thus, the provisions of the Electoral Count Act purporting to grant Congress the power, by concurrent resolution, to reject a state’s electoral votes, is unconstitutional. …

Making Appointment The Means Of Presidential Removal Of Officers Of The United States, David M. Driesen

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article examines the relationship between appointment and removal of officers of the United States, focusing on the administrations of Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump. These administrations’ use of appointment and removal underlines the potential tension between political removal accomplished without Senate approval of a successor and the Constitution’s goal of securing the rule of law.

To remedy these issues, this Article proposes that Congress pass a statute forbidding presidential removal of an agency head (and other Senate-approved appointees) until the President nominates a qualified successor or until the Senate confirms a successor. Integrating Appointments Clause …

The Text And The Ballot Box: S.3, S.33 And The Right To Cast An Informed Vote, Jamie Cameron

All Papers

Section 33, which empowers legislatures to override most of the Charter’s fundamental rights and guarantees, has resurfaced in recent years and more ominously, as a rights-negating mechanism. The relationship between s.33 and the Charter’s non-derogable rights is one issue that has arisen under s.33 legislation enacted by Quebec and Ontario. In Ontario, Bill 307’s use of the override to reinstate unconstitutional restrictions on third party political advertising also engages the democratic rights of voters protected by s.3 of the Charter. In marking the first time override legislation forms the backdrop to s.3’s interpretation, Working Families v. Ontario …

Partisan Gerrymandering And The Right To Privacy, Ana Deckey

CMC Senior Theses

This paper argues that partisan gerrymanderers violate citizens’ right to privacy by using data containing sensitive information on citizens without a compelling state interest. It first details how partisan gerrymandering claims have been argued in Court in the past. Next, it discusses theories of the right to privacy, mainly exploring the tensions between James Madison’s writings on privacy and Warren and Brandeis’ famed The Right to Privacy. Then, I present originalist arguments for upholding the original meaning and principles of the right to privacy and the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments before walking through case law related to privacy and …

Textualism, Judicial Supremacy, And The Independent State Legislature Theory, Leah Litman, Katherine Shaw

Articles

This piece offers an extended critique of one aspect of the so-called “independent state legislature” theory. That theory, in brief, holds that the federal Constitution gives state legislatures, and withholds from any other state entity, the power to regulate federal elections. Proponents ground their theory in two provisions of the federal Constitution: Article I’s Elections Clause, which provides that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” and Article II’s Presidential Electors Clause, which provides that “[e]ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature …

To Participate And Elect: Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act At 40, Ellen D. Katz, Brian Remlinger, Andrew Dziedzic, Brooke Simone, Jordan Schuler

Other Publications

This paper provides an overview of cases decided under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act between September 1, 1982 and December 31, 2021. It updates our 2006 study documenting Section 2 litigation through 2005. Of note is the substantial decline in the number of Section 2 cases decided and diminished success for the plaintiffs who bring them. While recent litigation (including Brnovich and Merrill v. Milligan) suggests that Section 2 is likely to occupy, at best, a diminished role in future electoral disputes, this paper shows that Section 2’s reach had already declined significantly prior to recent disputes. …