Election Law Commons^™

Symposium: Liquidating Elector Discretion, Rebecca Green

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Planned Obsolescence: The Supreme Court And Partisan Redistricting, Ethan Schafer

Honors Projects

Partisan redistricting, more commonly known as gerrymandering, is the act of a political party in power using its majority to draw district maps in such a way that it stays in power or increases its power. The United States Census takes place every ten years as mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, when the maps for state and national Congress are redrawn to better allocate representation among the people. Examples of this include the two cases that are discussed in Rucho v Common Cause, the redistricting case from 2019. In this case, both the Democrat-controlled government …

The Life Of Administrative Democracy, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Imagine if Congress, the President, and the industries they hoped to regulate all decided that neither politically isolated bureaucrats nor a popularly sanctioned President should wield the power to administer Congress’ laws, to make legislative-type policy, to enforce that policy, and to adjudicate disputes under it. Imagine if there were another experiment, one that has persisted, but few have noticed.

Imagine no longer. Overlooked by most, there is a model for federal administration that does not rely on isolated administrators or Presidential control, but instead on elected bureaucrats. Today, the United States Department of Agriculture houses over 7,500 elected farmer-bureaucrats …

A Political Effect On Judicial Decision Making: Does Ideology Or Election Effect The Way Judges Decide?, Kaylynne Lyons

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Politics have shown to have a strong effect on most things in our country. There has been lots of research on our state judicial systems and their effects on judicial decisions. Judges have been accused of having underlying reasons to their decisions even though they are not supposed to. Past research has suggested that how the judge is retained has a small but relevant effect on judicial decision making. The literature review discusses effects of the state's system of judicial selection. That leads us to question more about political effects on decision making. I analyze how the ideology of a …

A "Meaningful" Seat At The Table: Contemplating Our Ongoing Struggle To Access Democracy, James M. Binnall

SMU Law Review Forum

In recent years, felon-voter disenfranchisement has received considerable attention from academics, policymakers, and the media. In turn, a number of jurisdictions have eased record-based voter restriction statutes. And while those efforts represent a significant step toward full civic reintegration for those with a felony criminal history, they are far from comprehensive, as they regularly omit citizens with certain types of felony convictions and typically address only one form of civic marginalization. Focusing on recent reform in the area of civic restrictions, this Article suggests that incomplete civic restoration comes with significant consequences that ought to be considered during legislative negotiations. …

The “Whip Hand”: Congress’S Elections Clause Power As The Last Hope For Redistricting Reform After Rucho, Kevin Wender

Fordham Law Review

Redistricting activists have long argued that partisan gerrymandering poses a fundamental threat to American democracy. These concerns have become particularly acute as increasingly sophisticated technologies have enabled legislators to draw highly gerrymandered maps that powerfully entrench partisan advantage. Despite these concerns, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 2019 case of Rucho v. Common Cause, declared partisan gerrymandering to be a political issue outside the purview of the federal courts. The decision dealt a major blow to redistricting activists who, for over fifty years, had hoped that the Court would intervene to combat the drawing of electoral districts for partisan …

Law In The Time Of Covid-19, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Books

The COVID-19 crisis has ended and upended lives around the globe. In addition to killing over 160,000 people, more than 35,000 in the United States alone, its secondary effects have been as devastating. These secondary effects pose fundamental challenges to the rules that govern our social, political, and economic lives. These rules are the domain of lawyers. Law in the Time of COVID-19 is the product of a joint effort by members of the faculty of Columbia Law School and several law professors from other schools.

This volume offers guidance for thinking about some the most pressing legal issues the …

The Superfluous Fifteenth Amendment?, Travis Crum

Northwestern University Law Review

This Article starts a conversation about reorienting voting rights doctrine toward the Fifteenth Amendment. In advancing this claim, I explore an unappreciated debate—the “Article V debate”—in the Fortieth Congress about whether nationwide black suffrage could and should be achieved through a statute, a constitutional amendment, or both. As the first significant post-ratification discussion of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Article V debate provides valuable insights about the original public understandings of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the distinction between civil and political rights.

The Article V debate reveals that the Radical Republicans’ initial proposal for nationwide black suffrage included both …

Privacy Or The Polls: Public Voter Registration Laws As A Modern Form Of Vote Denial, Audrey Paige Sauer

William & Mary Law Review

On May 11, 2017, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PACEI), with the mission to “study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections.” Pursuant to this mission, Vice Chair of the Commission, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, sent out letters to state election officials soliciting all “publicly available voter roll data,” including all registrants’ full first and last names, middle names or initials, addresses, dates of birth, political party, last four digits of Social Security numbers if available, voter history from 2006 onward, information regarding any felony …

Return Of The King: Corruption Backsliding In America, Pedro Gerson

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The United States appears to be going through a crisis of corruption. However, it is hard to know whether this is a matter of appearance or if the country is at risk of high levels of corruption making a comeback. The Article applies the equilibrium model of corruptionthe leading social science account of how corruption operates-to the current U.S. system, and shows that the United States may indeed be backsliding. The potential for corruption to creep back up is due to more than the political moment. Rather, it is the result ofpolitics combined with the relatively powerless institutional controls for …

Faithless Electors: Keeping The Ties That Bind, Scott Eckl

Fordham Law Review

Every four years, the United States chooses a president and vice president. Millions of Americans exercise the right to vote, believing that they are voting for the candidates of their choice. In actuality, 538 relatively unknown party insiders known as electors officially choose the president a month later in fifty-one obscure meetings. Most of the time, these electors mirror the popular votes. However, whether these electors are required to do so and whether the states can enforce laws requiring them to do so are open questions. The Tenth Circuit recently declared statutes that bind electors unconstitutional. A few months before …

State Courts, The Right To Vote, And The Democracy Canon, Rebecca Guthrie

Fordham Law Review

Entire elections can be determined by the way a state judge chooses to interpret an election statute. And yet, there has been little scholarly attention on how judges construe statutes regulating elections at the state level. This Note begins to redress that lack of attention by undertaking an in-depth analysis of one interpretive tool historically invoked by state courts. The “Democracy Canon” is a substantive canon urging courts to liberally construe election statutes in favor of voter enfranchisement. By conducting a review of both historical and modern references to the Democracy Canon by state courts, this Note argues that courts …

Movement For Quality Government In Israel V. Speaker Of The Knesset, Esther Hayut, Hanan Melcer, Neal Hendel, Uzi Vogelman

Translated Opinions

Elections for the 23^rd Knesset were held on March 2, 2020, and the new Knesset was set to be sworn in on March 16, 2020. On March 15, 2020, in anticipation of the swearing in of the Knesset, several factions, comprising 61 Members of Knesset, requested that the acting Speaker of the Knesset, MK Yoel (Yuli) Edelstein, include a motion for the election of a permanent Speaker for the 23^rd Knesset on the agenda of that session. The Speaker refused.

Petitions challenging that decision were filed in the High Court of Justice by The Movement for Quality Government, …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Michael L. Rosin, David G. Post, David F. Forte, Michael Stokes Paulsen, And Sotirios Barber In Support Of Presidential Electors, David F. Forte, Michael L. Rosin, David G. Post, Michael Stokes Paulsen, Sotirios Barber

Law Faculty Briefs and Court Documents

The Framers of the Constitution crafted the Electoral College to be an independent institution with the responsibility of selecting the President and Vice-President. Therefore, they intended each elector to exercise independent judgment in deciding whom to vote for. A state cannot revise the Constitution unilaterally by reducing the elector to a ministerial agent who must vote in a particular way or face a sanction. The question of each elector’s moral or political obligation is not before the Court. Nor is the desirability of the current electoral system. Rather, this case turns on what the Constitution allows, and what it prohibits. …

Candidate Privacy, Rebecca Green

Faculty Publications

In the United States, we have long accepted that candidates for public office who have voluntarily stepped into the public eye sacrifice claims to privacy. This refrain is rooted deep within the American enterprise, emanating from the Framers' concept of the informed citizen as a bedrock of democracy. Voters must have full information about candidates to make their choices at the ballot box. Even as privacy rights for ordinary citizens have expanded, privacy theorists and courts continue to exempt candidates from privacy protections. This Article suggests that two disruptions warrant revisiting the privacy interests of candidates. The first is a …

With The Release Of Electoral Boundaries Report, All Eyes Now On Political Parties’ Next Moves, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan discussed the implications of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee (EBRC) report and what it means for the political parties and Singapore politics in general. He expects the election to be held sooner rather than later with the ERBC report's release, and there will be little time for parties, especially the opposition, to prepare.

Early Polls Make Sense In A Worsening Pandemic, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan opined there is no good time for a general election amid the global pandemic, and it is a judgment call on when to hold Singapore's 13th general election, which must take place by April next year at the latest. He believes early polls make sense in a worsening pandemic if the Government ensures that even as candidates campaign, there is no let-up in the fight against the outbreak.

Why The Nineteenth Amendment Matters Today: A Guide For The Centennial, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

The story of the Nineteenth Amendment includes a half-century of social movement contestation over whether permitting women to vote would destroy or democratize the American family and the American constitutional structure. This Essay revisits that story—an unfinished narrative of both disappointment and hope—in the service of identifying reasons why it relates to the lives of contemporary Americans. The overarching objective of the Essay is to suggest that the full story of the Nineteenth Amendment has always involved much more than a narrow debate over a determinate decision rule regarding women’s access to the franchise. To accomplish that objective, the Essay …

Event Program, Emory Law Journal

Randolph W. Thrower Symposium

Full event program for the 39th Annual Randolph W. Thrower Symposium held on Thursday, February 6th 2020 at the Emory University School of Law.

The Segregation Of Markets, Christian Turner

Texas A&M Law Review

Campaign-finance reformers fear that rich donors’ money can be used disproportionately to influence the content of campaign advertising and thus, perhaps, the results of elections. In European football, UEFA has attempted to ban “financial doping”—rich owners’ use of money earned in sectors other than football to pay large sums for the best football players. Campaign-finance reform efforts and “financial fair play” rules in sport may seem like bespoke solutions to different problems. In fact, they are the same solution to the same problem. Both are attempts to ensure that power accumulated in one market is not brought into another market …