Election Law Commons^™

Fighting Foreign-Corporate Political Access: Applying Corporate Veil-Piercing Doctrine To Domestic-Subsidiary Contributions, Ryan Rott

Michigan Law Review

Campaign finance regulations limit speech. The laws preclude foreign nationals, including foreign corporations, from participating in U.S. politics via campaign contributions. The unusual characteristics of corporations, however, may allow foreign corporations to exploit a loophole in the regulatory regime. A foreign corporation may contribute to political campaigns by acquiring a domestic subsidiary and dominating it. This Note addresses how these unusual corporate behaviors enable foreign corporations to illegally corrupt the political process. This Note concludes that to close the loophole without violating the free speech rights of domestic subsidiaries, Congress should enact legislation which would apply corporate veil-piercing theory to …

Campaign Finance And The Ecology Of Democratic Speech, Michael Kent Curtis, Eugene D. Mazo

Kentucky Law Journal

Biologists have contributed to our understanding of the world's ecosystems, explaining how the natural world is populated by different species, which are able to thrive and blossom because of the existence of other species in the rightproportion. In similar fashion, the authors of this article believe that the political world has an ecosystem. It is an ecosystem where free speech may thrive or wither, and its fate rests on the delicate balance of political influence between citizens and corporations. This balance is disturbed when concentrations of wealth funnel into the democratic process through campaign spending. The Supreme Court, through its …

Who's Afraid Of The Hated Political Gerrymander?, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Kentucky Law Journal

The political gerrymander has few friends among scholars and commentators. Even a majority on the Supreme Court agreed that the practice violates constitutional and democratic norms. Andyet, this is one of the few issues that the US. Supreme Court refuses to regulate. The justices mask their refusal to regulate this area on a professedi nability to divinej uaicially-manageables tandards. In turn, scholars offer new standards for the justices to consider. This is not only a mistake but also misguided. The history of the political question doctrine makes clear that the discovery of manageable standards has never controlled the Court's prior …

The Price Of Corruption, Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court recently held that campaign contributions under $5200 do not create a “cognizable risk of corruption.” It was wrong. This Essay describes a nexus of timely contributions and special-interest legislation. In the most noteworthy case, a CEO made a first-time $1000 donation to a member of Congress. The next day that representative introduced a securities bill tailored to the interests of the CEO’s firm.

Armed with this real-world account of how small-dollar campaign contributions coincided with favorable legislative action, the Essay reads McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission with a critical eye. In McCutcheon the Supreme Court assumed that …

Two-Time Presidents And The Vice-Presidency, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

Does the Constitution limit the ability of a twice-before-elected President to serve as Vice-President? This question, as it turns out, presents an intricate constitutional puzzle, the solution of which requires working through four separate sub-inquiries: Is a two-term President totally ineligible for the Vice-Presidency? Is such a person barred from election to the Vice-Presidency even if that person remains appointable to that office? Is a twice-before-elected President, even if properly placed in the Vice-Presidency, incapable of succeeding from that office to the Presidency? And even if such a succession can occur, must the resulting term of service as President expire …

An Empirical Analysis Of State Supreme Court Candidate Fundraising, Michael Briach

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

As political elections are becoming more expensive, judicial elections are also following this trend. This project focuses on elections at the state supreme court level. There are three different methods used to select state supreme court justices, which are: partisan, nonpartisan, and merit selections. The intent of this project is to provide an empirical analysis of the differences in amounts raised between judicial selection methods. This will be done by examining the amount of money that is raised by state supreme court candidates in Ohio, compared to Florida. Ohio is a state that uses partisan elections, while Florida uses the …

Toward A Fundamental Right To Evade Law? Protecting The Rule Of Unequal Racial And Economic Power In Shelby County And State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal Articles

To rationalize its ruling on voting rights, Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder develops a constitutional vision of passivity in the face of institutionalized power to violate the law. This essay compares Shelby County to State Farm Mutual Automobile v. Campbell, a 2003 Supreme Court ruling involving a different subject area, state punitive damage awards. In both, the Court asserts newly articulated judicial power to override other branches, not to protect human rights, but rather to expand institutionalized immunity from those rights. On the surface, the Court’s rejection of state sovereignty in State Farm (protecting multistate corporations from high punitive damages) …

The Young And The Restless: How The Twenty-Sixth Amendment Could Play A Role In The Current Debate Over Voting Laws, Nancy Turner

American University Law Review

The Twenty-Sixth Amendment is commonly understood as lowering the voting age to eighteen. However, a close look at the Amendment's language and history indicates that the Twenty-Sixth Amendment does more than just grant a right. Properly read, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment acts as an antidiscrimination law similar to the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments. Accordingly, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment possesses the power not just to invalidate legislation that explicitly contravenes its purpose, but also to neutralize facially neutral legislation that was enacted with a discriminatory intent. Using Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment jurisprudence as a guide, this Comment proposes a framework for structuring …

Reynolds Reconsidered, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Jekyll And Hyde Of First Amendment Limits On The Regulation Of Judicial Campaign Speech, Charles G. Geyh

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Dark Money In Motion: Mapping Issues Along The Money Trail, Frances R. Hill

Articles

No abstract provided.

Reynolds Reconsidered, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Voting Rights In Winter: The Death Of A Superstatute, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

The Voting Rights Act (“VRA”), the most successful civil rights statute in American history, is dying. In the recent Shelby County decision, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled that the anti-discrimination model, long understood as the basis for the VRA as originally enacted, is no longer the best way to understand today’s voting rights questions. As a result, voting rights activists need to face up to the fact that voting rights law and policy are at a critical moment of transition. It is likely the case that the superstatute we once knew as the VRA is no more and is never …

Race, Federalism, And Voting Rights, Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court struck down an important provision of the Voting Rights Act, section 4, on federalism grounds. The Court argued that Congress no longer had the power to enact section 4 because of the “federalism costs” imposed by the Act and because the Act violated "basic principles" of federalism. Unfortunately, the Court failed to articulate the costs to federalism imposed by the Act, much less conduct a cost-benefit analysis in order to determine whether the benefits of the Act outweighed its costs. Moreover, the Court failed to discuss whether the Reconstruction Amendments ought to matter …

A Quantum Congress, Jorge R. Roig

Scholarly Works

This article tries to address the problem of a corrupt and broken electoral system that has been captured by special interests through big money spending in political campaigns, while at the same time preserving the spirit of the Free Speech Clause of our Constitution. In doing so, this article first reviews and summarizes the different alternatives proposed as potential fixes for the campaign finance problem. It then explains why none of the proposed alternatives can accomplish the dual goals set out above. Finally, the article briefly sketches a proposal for a fundamental reworking of our representative democracy by substituting legislative …

Administering Section 2 Of The Voting Rights Act After Shelby County, Christopher S. Elmendorf, Douglas M. Spencer

Publications

Until the Supreme Court put an end to it in Shelby County v. Holder, section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was widely regarded as an effective, low-cost tool for blocking potentially discriminatory changes to election laws and administrative practices. The provision the Supreme Court left standing, section 2, is generally seen as expensive, cumbersome, and almost wholly ineffective at blocking changes before they take effect. This Article argues that the courts, in partnership with the Department of Justice, could reform section 2 so that it fills much of the gap left by the Supreme Court's evisceration of section …

Transparency Rules In U.S. Elections Need Updating To Reflect 21st Century Realities, Rebecca Green

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Mccutcheon V. Federal Election Commission, Stephen M. Degenaro

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission involved a challenge to limits imposed on the amount a donor may contribute during a single election cycle. In McCutcheon, the Court was presented with the question of whether the aggregate limits placed on contributions to candidate and noncandidate committees either lacked a cognizable constitutional interest or were unconstitutionally too low. In a five to four decision, the Supreme Court held that the aggregate limits on campaign contributions burden substantial First Amendment rights without furthering a permissible government interest.

Rethinking Transparency In U.S. Elections, Rebecca Green

Faculty Publications

Bush v. Gore catapulted this country into a crisis of confidence in the management of our elections. Despite reforms since 2000, public confidence in election administration continues to wane. Are dead people on the rolls? Are noncitizens voting? Are provisional ballots wrongly rejected? State election transparency statutes meant to reassure the public that elections are producing legitimate results are often conflicting, vague, and even nonexistent. Exacerbating the problem, the last two decades have witnessed huge changes that offset the transparency balance. Dramatic changes in how Americans vote, how elections are administered, and who scrutinizes the election process call for a …

A Recount Of The Recount: Obenshain V. Herring, Hon. Beverly Snukals, Maggie Bowman

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.