Fourteenth Amendment Commons^™

Evaluating Candidacy Restrictions: The Implications Of New York's Modified Approach, Brian Hodgkinson

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A New Approach To Judicial Scrutiny Of Voter Registration Laws, David Feinstein

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

This Note argues that 3PVRO activities implicate First Amendment rights to a degree that merits substantial constitutional protection, and therefore more robust judicial scrutiny of laws regulating them. The applicable constitutional standard requires a court to ask whether the regulated acts constitute political activity within the meaning of the First Amendment. An approach that more accurately reflects the political nature of voter registration will likewise enhance the utility of that standard, and yield more consistent results. This Note further argues that in certain cases restrictions on voter registration activities severely burden core First Amendment rights, and should therefore be subject …

Unfinished Business: Protecting Voting Rights In The Twenty-First Century, Gilda R. Daniels

All Faculty Scholarship

While minorities have experienced great progress because of the Voting Rights Act, particularly section 5 of the Act, the work to achieve an electoral process free of discrimination remains unfinished. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down section 4 of the Act, which provided the coverage formula through which section 5 was implemented. Without section 4, there is no section 5. The historical and contemporaneous discrimination that minorities in states formerly covered under section 5 continue to face is substantial and outpaces that in noncovered states. Scholars cannot divorce the debate surrounding section 5’s constitutionality, which continues …

The "Nixon Sabotage": The Political Origins Of The Equal Protection Challenge To The Voting Rights Act, Danieli Evans

Articles

Critics of the Voting Rights Act argue that the anti-discrimination law requires states to engage in unconstitutional discrimination, as state decisionmakers must be conscious of race in order to ensure that voting policies do not weaken minority representation. This argument relies on the idea that subjective racial motivation is the essence of unconstitutional discrimination (even if benevolent, or to promote racial inclusion). The conventional understanding among constitutional scholars is that this “search for the bigoted decisionmaker” developed in employment and housing discrimination decisions between 1976 and 1979. Previous accounts have not recognized the role that the 1971 school desegregation decision …

Buying A Judicial Seat For Appeal: Caperton V. A.T. Massey Coal Company, Inc., Is Right Out Of A John Grisham Novel, Richard Gillespie

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Blocking The Ballot: Why Florida’S New Voting Restrictions Demonstrate A Need For Continued Enforcement Of The Voting Rights Act Preclearance Requirement, Michael Ellement

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Death Of The Voting Rights Act Or An Exercise In Geometry?--Shaw V. Reno Provides More Questions Than Answers, Michael J. Moffatt

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Could The Best Of Tightrope Walkers Manage To Walk The Line Between Race-Consciousness And Race-Predominance? An Analysis Of Race-Based Districting In Light Of Miller V. Johnson, Sean Simpson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shelby County V. Holder And The Voting Rights Act: Getting The Right Answer With The Wrong Standard, Michael James Burns

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The War On Women's Fundamental Rights: Connecting U.S. Supreme Court Originalism To Rightwing, Conservative Extremism In American Politics, Donna J. King

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause, intended to protect fundamental rights for all citizens, including women, has been systematically undermined by the U.S. Supreme Court's originalist interpretations. This erosion, exemplified by cases like SlaughterHouse, has emboldened right-wing extremism and threatens women's rights, particularly in the context of unenumerated fundamental rights. The article contends that the Court's narrow constructions and disregard for legislative history have perpetuated inequality and stripped the Clause of its intended protective power.

The Pursuit Of Perfection: Congressional Power To Enforce The Reconstruction Amendments, A. Christopher Bryant

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In June 2009 the Supreme Court avoided a decision on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement, while at the same time managing to foreshadow that provision's ultimate demise. In a separate opinion, Justice Thomas announced that he would have reached the issue and invalidated the preclearance requirement. Conceding that unconstitutional racial discrimination in the administration of elections continued to be an unfortunate reality, he asserted that Congress was not permitted to pursue "perfect compliance" with the Constitution's mandate via the use of "broad prophylactic legislation."

Justice Thomas's statement accurately, though to be sure rather starkly, expressed an …

Crawford V. Marion County Election Board: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words And Exactly One Vote, Brian C. Crook

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Katrina Voting Wrongs: Aftermath Of Hurricane And Weak Enforcement Dilute African American Voting Rights In New Orleans, William P. Quigley

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

New York Board Of Elections V. Torres: Brief Of Amici Curiae Law Professors Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Erwin Chemerinsky, Kareem Crayton, Steven P. Croley, Heather K. Gerken, Michael Kang, Ellen D. Katz, Ethan J. Leib, Michael Pitts, And Daniel P. Tokaji In Support Of Respondents, Ellen D. Katz

Appellate Briefs

The law professors named below teach and write about elections, voting rights, political parties, and electoral competition. Both basic and advanced law courses on voting and elections, as well as a wide range of scholarship on these subjects, regularly considers state authority to regulate conduct by political parties, candidates for office, and individual voters. Amici are among the many scholars who write and teach about the issues before the Court in this case.

Based on this expertise, and on careful review of this Court's decisions, amici argue in this brief that the nominating process the State of New York employs …

Sex Required: The Impact Of Massachusetts' Same-Sex Marriage Cases On Marriages With Intersex And Transsexual Partners, Aleks Kajstura

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that the Census Bureau's practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prison locations, rather than their home communities, distorts political representation by inflating the voting power of districts with prisons and diluting that of others, undermining the principle of "one person, one vote."

Why Legislative Findings Can Pad-Lock Redistricting Plans In Racial-Gerrymandering Cases, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1371 (2006), Frank Adams

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Self-Defeating Minimalism, Adam B. Cox

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Everyone wants a piece of Tom DeLay. The former majority leader is under investigation and indictment, and even the Supreme Court threatened last Term to undo one of his signal achievements. In 2003, DeLay orchestrated a highly unusual mid-decade revision of Texas’s congressional map. The revised map was a boon to Republicans, shifting the Texas congressional delegation from 15 Republicans and 17 Democrats to 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats. The map was attacked as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and a violation of the Voting Rights Act. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear those challenges in LULAC v. Perry, many …

Cultural Compactness, Daniel R. Oritz

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The Supreme Court’s opinions in LULAC v. Perry, the Texas redistricting case, confounded expectation. While many believed that the Court would develop the law governing partisan gerrymandering in one direction or another, it did not. As exactly before, such claims are justiciable but there is no law to govern them. In other words, the courthouse doors are open, but until some plaintiff advances a novel theory persuasive to five justices, no claims will succeed. On the other hand, few expected the Court to make any major changes to doctrine under the Voting Rights Act and Shaw v. Reno. But LULAC …

This Way To The Egress And Other Reflections On Partisan Gerrymandering Claims In Light Of Lulac V. Perry, Bernard Grofman

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

After winning control of both houses of the legislature and the governorship, Texas Republicans eventually succeeded in redistricting Texas’s congressional seats in 2003, replacing a 2001 court-drawn plan. LULAC v. Perry reviewed a number of challenges to that second redistricting. The decision deals with a multiplicity of issues, including, most importantly, the standard for violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the nature of tests for unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. While there are some clear holdings in the case, several of them reflect different combinations of Justices in the majority and, since there are six different opinions, it …

Anthony Kennedy's Blind Quest, Scot Powe, Steve Bickerstaff

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

League of United Latin American Citizens [LULAC] v. Perry embraced, in the context of partisan gerrymandering, Felix Frankfurter’s conclusion that the Supreme Court should not enter the political thicket of legislative apportionment. Two years earlier in Vieth v. Jubelirer, the Court split 4–1–4 on the justiciability of partisan gerrymandering. O’Conner and the three conservatives held it was nonjusticiable. Each of the four moderate liberals offered a test showing it was justiciable. Kennedy dissented from the conservatives while simultaneously rejecting each of the four tests offered. He announced he was waiting for a better test. When far superior tests were offered …

Lulac On Partisan Gerrymandering: Some Clarity, More Uncertainty, Richard Briffault

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In League of United Latin American Citizens (“LULAC”) v. Perry, the Supreme Court, for the second time in two years, agonized over partisan gerrymandering. LULAC’s rejection of a Democratic challenge to the Texas legislature’s mid-decade pro-Republican congressional redistricting resembles the Court’s 2004 dismissal of a Democratic gerrymandering suit against Pennsylvania’s pro-Republican congressional redistricting plan in Vieth v. Jubelirer. As in Vieth, the Justices wrangled over justiciability, the substantive standard for assessing the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering claims, and the interplay of justiciability and constitutionality. As in Vieth, the Court was highly fragmented: Vieth produced five separate opinions, while LULAC took …

Strict In Theory, Loopy In Fact, Nathaniel Persily

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Most Supreme Court-watchers find the decision in LULAC v. Perry notable for the ground it breaks concerning Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the ground it refuses to break on the topic of partisan gerrymandering. I tend to think the Court’s patchwork application of Section 2 to strike down a district on vote dilution grounds is not all that dramatic, nor is its resolution of the partisan gerrymandering claims all that surprising. The truly unprecedented development in the case for me was Justice Scalia’s vote to uphold what he considered a racial classification under the Equal Protection Clause, …

Limiting The Presidency To Natural Born Citizens Violates Due Process, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1343 (2006), Paul A. Clark

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Winner, Best Appellate Brief In The 2005 Native American Law Student Association Moot Court Competition, Brian Mcclatchey, Paul Porter

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Turning The Page On Section 5: The Implication Of Multiracial Coalition Districts On Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act, Daniel A. Zibel

Michigan Law Review

This Note analyzes the use of coalition districts in light of current section 5 and equal protection jurisprudence and argues that, in some circumstances, the Equal Protection Clause compels the use of coalition districts to achieve non retrogression under section 5. Part I examines the use of coalition districts, using the litigation in Page v. Bartels as an example. It then argues that the Supreme Court's opinion in Georgia v. Ashcroft permits jurisdictions to create viable racial coalition districts to comply with section 5. Part II argues that while Georgia v. Ashcroft permits the use of coalition districts to achieve …

Resurrecting The White Primary, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

An unprecedented number of noncompetitive or "safe" electoral districts operate in the United States today. Noncompetitive districts elect officials with more extreme political views and foster more polarized legislatures than do competitive districts. More fundamentally, they inhibit meaningful political participation. That is because participating in an election that is decided before it begins is an empty exercise. Voting in a competitive election is not, even though a single vote will virtually never decide the outcome. What a competitive election offers to each voter is the opportunity to be the coveted swing voter, the one whose support candidates most seek, the …

Reinforcing Representation: Congressional Power To Enforce The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz

Michigan Law Review

A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …

Reinforcing Representation: Enforcing The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Amendments In The Rehnquist And Waite Courts, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

A large body of academic scholarship accuses the Rehnquist Court of "undoing the Second Reconstruction," just as the Waite Court has long been blamed for facilitating the end of the First. This critique captures much of what is meant by those generally charging the Rehnquist Court with "conservative judicial activism." It posits that the present Court wants to dismantle decades' worth of federal antidiscrimination measures that are aimed at the "reconstruction" of public and private relationships at the local level. It sees the Waite Court as having similarly nullified the civil-rights initiatives enacted by Congress following the Civil War to …

Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, And The First Amendment Right Of Association, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The False Promise Of One Person, One Vote, Grant M. Hayden

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article challenges the theoretical foundations of the right to cast an equally weighted vote. That right, most elegantly captured in the phrase one person, one vote, was at the heart of the early reapportionment cases and has since become one of the hallmarks of democracy. One of the principal reasons for the success of the one person, one vote standard is that it appears to be a neutral or objective way of parsing out political power. Drawing on recent work in philosophy and economics on the nature of interpersonal utility comparisons, I demonstrate the normative character of the standard. …