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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
Let Us Not Be Intimidated: Past And Present Applications Of Section 11(B) Of The Voting Rights Act, Carly E. Zipper
Let Us Not Be Intimidated: Past And Present Applications Of Section 11(B) Of The Voting Rights Act, Carly E. Zipper
Washington Law Review
As John Lewis said, “[the] vote is precious. Almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have to create a more perfect union.” The Voting Rights Act (VRA), likewise, is a powerful tool. This Comment seeks to empower voters and embolden their advocates to better use that tool with an improved understanding of its little-known protection against voter intimidation, section 11(b).
Although the term “voter intimidation” may connote armed confrontations at polling places, some forms of intimidation are much more subtle and insidious—dissuading voters from heading to the polls on election day rather than confronting them outright when …
Alternative Dispute Resolution For Election Access Issues In A Post-Voting Rights Act Section 5 Landscape, Casey Millburg
Alternative Dispute Resolution For Election Access Issues In A Post-Voting Rights Act Section 5 Landscape, Casey Millburg
Arbitration Law Review
No abstract provided.
This Way To The Egress And Other Reflections On Partisan Gerrymandering Claims In Light Of Lulac V. Perry, Bernard Grofman
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 …
Lulac On Partisan Gerrymandering: Some Clarity, More Uncertainty, Richard Briffault
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 …
Self-Defeating Minimalism, Adam B. Cox
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
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 …
Anthony Kennedy's Blind Quest, Scot Powe, Steve Bickerstaff
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 …
Strict In Theory, Loopy In Fact, Nathaniel Persily
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, …
Felon Disenfrachisement Laws: Partisan Politics In The Legislatures, Jason Belmont Conn
Felon Disenfrachisement Laws: Partisan Politics In The Legislatures, Jason Belmont Conn
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This examination of the institutional changes to state legislatures, synthesized with an analysis of the handling of felon disenfranchisement laws by state legislatures, presents a troubling realization about the law today: in the twenty-first century, partisan politics moderates decisions about even the most basic and fundamental principles of democracy. This Note suggests that because state legislators follow their party leadership and position, a state's traditional treatment of racial minorities, geographic location, and even ideology are not the strongest indicators of a state's disenfranchisement laws. Rather, partisan politics drives changes to the state laws governing felon voter eligibility.
After Georgia V. Ashcroft: The Primacy Of Proportionality, Felix B. Chang
After Georgia V. Ashcroft: The Primacy Of Proportionality, Felix B. Chang
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Note argues that the majority in Ashcroft have left courts with an unadministerable standard-not so much for reasons that Justice Souter articulated in his dissent, but rather because the Court provided no guidance on navigating around the myriad of factors in the convoluted totality analyses. In the face of this uncertainty, lower courts will rely increasingly on the proportionality standard of Johnson v. De Grandy, which marked the midpoint in the judicial shift from Justice Brennan's worldview to Justice O'Connor's world-view. Part I examines two cases after Ashcroft which represent different degrees of racial vote dilution: Shirt v. …
Strategic Voting And African-Americans: True Vote, True Representation, True Power For The Black Community, Maxine Burkett
Strategic Voting And African-Americans: True Vote, True Representation, True Power For The Black Community, Maxine Burkett
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
As long as American politics remain securely bound to the two-party system, Blacks will remain a voting block; a block that may shift, but a block nonetheless. And although this appears to be to our strategic disadvantage, allowing conviction to direct us, as well as a deep respect for the intense struggle for the franchise, will forever be a noble posture.
The Fallacy Of Neutrality: Diary Of An Election Observer, Jeanne M. Woods
The Fallacy Of Neutrality: Diary Of An Election Observer, Jeanne M. Woods
Michigan Journal of International Law
Neutrality is one of many conceptual fictions of liberal discourse. A legal fiction is "contrived by the law" to facilitate adjudication of issues. Such fictions may serve as symbols, to make abstract concepts tangible or, they may be myths designed to promote some normative principle or goal. The problem arises when these fictions cease to be recognized as inventions, or as "presumptions about reality," and are believed to have an independent existence in reality. Then, they "purport to provide us with an objective and impersonal criterion, but they do not." According to the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, a fiction is "a …
The Empitness Of Majority Rule, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
The Empitness Of Majority Rule, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In this Note, the author steers away from the current substantive debates surrounding the Voting Rights Act, its various amendments, and the "correct" way of interpreting its intended benefits and constitutionally accepted mandates. Instead, indirectly joins the many "radical" voices advocating for a departure from the majoritarian stranglehold-the decision-making process where fifty percent plus one of the voting population carry the election. The author does so not by suggesting yet another mechanism by which representatives may be elected, but by critiquing the perceived underpinnings of our democratic system of government. The author does not profess to delineate a definitive interpretation …