Election Law Commons^™

Historical Roots Of Citizens United Vs. Fec: How Anarchists And Academics Accidentally Created Corporate Speech Rights, The General Essay, Zephyr Teachout

Faculty Scholarship

This paper looks at how the early rhetoric around the First Amendment enabled later development of corporate political speech rights.

Justice Kennedy To The Rescue?, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Looking For A Few Good Philosopher Kings: Political Gerrymandering As A Question Of Institutional Competence, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The redistricting season is about to begin in full swing, and with it will come renewed calls for the federal courts, and particularly the U. S. Supreme Court, to aggressively review the work of the political branches. This is an intriguing puzzle. Since the early 1960’s, the federal courts have regulated questions of politics aggressively. They have done this even in the face of difficult questions of political representation. The courts have taken sides, to be sure, but these can only be described as acts of volition and will, not constitutional law. The leading case is Reynolds v. Sims. This …

Ethnicity, Elections, And Reform In Burma, David C. Williams

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Elections In California, Karen Skinner

Publications

No abstract provided.

On Dejudicializing American Campaign Finance Law, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court dominates American campaign finance law. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission dramatically illustrates this basic truth, but Citizens United is nothing new. The Court has been the preeminent force in shaping and constraining our campaign finance laws since Buckley v. Valeo, and the Court's role as arbiter of what regulations may or may not be enforced only continues to grow. The President of the United States can wag his finger at the Court during the State of the Union Address and denounce its Citizens United ruling to the Justices' faces on national television, but even he …

Corporations, Corruption, And Complexity: Campaign Finance After Citizens United, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Few campaign finance cases have drawn more public attention than the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The Court's invalidation of a sixty-year-old federal law – and comparable laws in two dozen states – banning corporations from engaging in independent spending in support of or opposition to candidates strongly affirms the right of corporations to engage in electoral advocacy. Critics – and most, albeit not all, of both the popular and academic commentary on the decision has been critical – have condemned the idea that corporations enjoy the same rights to spend on elections as natural persons. …

Racial Redistricting In A Post-Racial World, Gilda R. Daniels

All Faculty Scholarship

The 2011 redistricting will provide some interesting challenges for minority voting rights. How can we preserve minority electoral opportunities and gains in the wake of Bartlett v. Strickland and Georgia v. Ashcroft? What is the impact on future voting rights litigation and are coalition district claims viable as an opportunity to continue the electoral gains made since the passage of the Voting Rights Act? Are majority-minority districts safe from legislative backsliding? The Supreme Court's construed admonitions against race-conscious redistricting in recent cases may become cautionary tales. This Article discusses the central role the Voting Rights Act should play in preserving …

Elections And Government Formation In Iraq: An Analysis Of The Judiciary's Role, Charles P. Trumbull Iv, Julie B. Martin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In 2005, the people of Iraq ratified a permanent Constitution, a significant milestone in the journey from Saddam Hussein's authoritarian rule to democratic governance. Among the Constitution's fundamental guarantees are the separation and balance of powers, the selection of Parliament through regular and periodic popular election, and an independent judiciary empowered as the authority on constitutional interpretation. Iraq's commitment to democracy and the Constitution was put to the test five years later with the first parliamentary election under the new Constitution. The run-up to the elections was marred by political disputes, violence, and legal challenges, as Iraqis argued over controversial …

If Not A Commercial Republic? Political Economy In The United States After Citizens United, David A. Westbrook

Journal Articles

In

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , a majority of the Supreme Court conceived the United States to be an oligarchy and ruled accordingly. What this decision might come to mean for political economy in the United States is explored through three interrelated responses to the decision. In the first,

Citizens United is a turning point for constitutional law scholarship, and by extension, for what is expected from our legal system. After

Citizens United , legal scholars may abandon the idea that the Court takes legal argument seriously, and that law thereby constrains, as well as expresses, social privilege. …

Legitimate Absenteeism: The Unconstitutionality Of The Caucus Attendance Requirement, Heather R. Abraham

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Charities And Lobbying: Institutional Rights In The Wake Of Citizens United, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Journal Articles

One of the many aftershocks of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. FEC is that the decision may raise constitutional questions for the long-standing limits on speech by charities. There has been much scholarly attention both before and after that decision on the limit for election-related speech by charities, but much less attention has been paid to the relating lobbying speech limit. This article seeks to close that gap by exploring that latter limit and its continued viability in the wake of Citizens United. I conclude that while Citizens United by itself does not undermine the limit …

Plan B For Campaign-Finance Reform: Can The Fcc Help Save American Politics After Citizens United?, Lili Levi

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Spelling Murkowski: The Next Act - A Reply To Fishkin And Levitt, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

Both Joey Fishkin’s and Justin Levitt’s responses to my article, “How Do You Spell MURKOWSKI?” deal thoughtfully with the deeper questions raised by the Murkowski litigation. They both wonder, in various ways, what the right way to think about voter assistance should be. But they approach the issue from very different angles. Fishkin focuses on the state’s obligation to assist voters: to what extent, and in what ways, is the state obligated to help voters vote? Levitt approaches the question of voter assistance from nearly the opposite angle: what responsibilities do voters have in making sure that their vote counts, …

How Do You Spell M-U-R-K-O-W-S-K-I? Part I: The Question Of Assistance To The Voter, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

The 2010 race for the Alaska Senate now seems to be over. After losing in the Republican Party Primary to Tea Party-backed candidate Joe Miller, Senator Lisa Murkowski staged a write-in candidacy and, bucking both U.S. and Alaska history, won the general election. Although much attention has been paid to Miller’s post-election challenges to Murkowski write-in ballots, a major election law question was at issue prior to the election: to what extent can poll workers assist voters who need help in voting for a write-in candidate?

After Murkowski declared her write-in candidacy, the Alaska Division of Elections distributed a list …

What Do We Want In A Presidential Primary? An Election Law Perspective, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

Although the 2008 presidential primaries were in many ways a resounding success in terms of turnout, attention, and sheer excitement, many noted the pressing need for reform. States were rushing to hold their primaries sooner than ever, giving rise to “Super-Duper Tuesday,” where twenty-four states had their primaries on the same day. The Democratic nominee at one point looked like it might be decided by the votes of so-called “Superdelegates” - party regulars beholden to no one. As the Democratic nomination contest wore on, Rush Limbaugh, in “Operation Chaos,” encouraged his “dittoheads” to raid the party primaries of the Democrats, …

Case For Calling An Article V Convention, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Financing Direct Democracy: Revisiting The Research On Campaign Spending And Citizen Initiatives, John M. De Figueiredo, Chang Ho Ji, Thad Kousser

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional view in the direct democracy literature is that spending against a measure is more effective than spending in favor of a measure, but the empirical results underlying this conclusion have been questioned by recent research. We argue that the conventional finding is driven by the endogenous nature of campaign spending: initiative proponents spend more when their ballot measure is likely to fail. We address this endogeneity by using an instrumental variables approach to analyze a comprehensive dataset of ballot propositions in California from 1976 to 2004. We find that both support and opposition spending on citizen initiatives have …

Public Funding Of Judicial Campaigns: The North Carolina Experience And The Activism Of The Supreme Court, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the problem of selecting judges to sit on the highest state courts has become a national crisis. North Carolina remains among the states whose constitutions require competitive elections of all its judges. Presently, all candidates for its judicial offices must first compete for election in a non-partisan primary, a system motivated by the desire to maximize the power of the state’s citizen-voters to choose their judges and hold them accountable for their fidelity to the law. Some observers have continued to celebrate such judicial elections as an honorable democratic empowerment, while others have not. The disagreement has …

Making A List And Checking It Twice, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.