Coming Late Summer: Legislation, Statutory Interpretation & Election Law: Examples & Explanations

I’ve turned in a completed first draft of this book, with the hopes that it will be out in time for fall classes. This book, part of Aspen’s great Examples & Explanations series, is a student-friendly treatise with questions and answers throughout the chapters testing the material. This book is designed to be a supplement in classes on Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, Election Law, Voting Rights, or Campaign Finance. It is compatible with all the casebooks in these fields (and the book will have a chart showing how the book corresponds to each casebook’s coverage).

The tentative table of contents is below the fold.

Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law:

Examples and Explanations

 

Richard L. Hasen

Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science

University of California, Irvine School of Law

[email protected]

 

[DRAFT] Table of Contents

 

Part I — The Legislative Process

 

1.              How a Bill Becomes a Law: From Schoolhouse Rock to Vetogates and Unorthodox Lawmaking

1.1       Introduction: How a Bill Becomes a Law

1.2       Formal Requirements for Federal Legislation

1.2.1. Bicameralism and Presentment (including the Enrolled Bill Rule and Origination Clause)

1.2.2. The Veto Power (including the Line Item Veto)

1.3       Details of the Formal Federal Legislative Process

1.3.1. Rules for Consideration of Bills in the House of Representatives

1.3.2. Rules for Consideration of Bills in the Senate, Including Filibuster Rules

1.4       Theories of the Legislative Process

1.5       The Modern Federal Legislative Process: Majority Power, Political Polarization and the Decline of Regular Order

 

 

2.              Regulating Legislators

2.1       Qualifications for Office, Term Limits, and Punishment

2.2       Legislative Deliberation

2.2.1    Speech or Debate Clause Issues

2.2.2    Single Subject Rules and Logrolling

2.2.3    Due Process of Lawmaking

 

 

3.              Lobbying, Bribery, and External Legislative Influence

3.1       Lobbying

3.1.1    How Lobbying Works

3.1.2    Lobbying Disclosure Rules

3.1.3    Other Lobbying Regulations

3.2       Bribery and Related Offenses

3.2.1    The Elements of Bribery

3.2.2    More on Intent to Influence: Campaign Contributions as Bribes

3.2.3    Related Offenses

3.3       Ethics and Gift Rules

 

4.              Direct Democracy

4.1       Direct Democracy as “Hybrid Democracy”

4.2       The Single Subject Rule and Other Content Restrictions on Initiatives

4.3       Petitioning Rules and Financing Ballot Qualification Drives

 

 Part II — Statutory Interpretation

 

5.              Theories and Practice of Statutory Interpretation

5.1       Introduction: The Holy Trinity Church Problem …. or “The Food Stays in the Kitchen”

5.2       Theories of Interpretation: Intentionalism, Purposivism, Textualism, and Dynamic Statutory Interpretation

5.3       The Great Debate Over Legislative History and the New Textualism

5.4       Stare Decisis and Statutory Interpretation

 

6.              Canons of Statutory Interpretation

6.1       Why Canons?

6.2       Textual Canons

6.3       Substantive Canons

 

7.              Legislative History

7.1       Committee Reports: The Gold Standard

7.2       Floor Statements and Other Types of Legislative History

7.3       Legislative Silence or Failure as Legislative History

7.4       Other Statutes

 

8.              Agency Interpretation: Statutory Interpretation in the Administrative State

8.1       Why is Agency Interpretation Different?

8.2       The Chevron Doctrine and Agency Deference

8.3       Is Chevron Deference the Only Form of Judicial Deference to Agency Interpretation?

 

Part III — Voting Rights and Representation

 

9.              The Right to Vote, Representation, and Redistricting

9.1       Who (Decides Who) Votes?

9.1.1    Introduction: Three Questions About Literacy Tests

9.1.2    Voting as a Fundamental Right for Citizen, Adult, Resident Non-Felons

9.2       Vote Dilution and the One Person, One Vote Rule

9.2.1    Baker, Reynolds, and the Emergence of the One Person, One Vote Rule

9.2.2    One Person, One Vote: Extensions and Complications

9.3       Special Purpose Election Districts

9.4       Introduction to Redistricting

 

10.           Political Parties, Political Gerrymandering, and Political Competition

10.1     Why Parties? Political Competition in Political Science and Law

10.2     Partisan Gerrymandering

10.3     Obligations and Associational Rights of Political Parties

10.4     Minor Parties and Independent Candidates

 

11.           The Voting Rights Act, Race, and Redistricting

11.1     Origins of the Voting Rights Act and the Workings of Section 5 Preclearance

11.2     Shelby County and the End of Section 5 Preclearance

11.3     Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act: Redistricting and Beyond

11.3.1  Section 2 and Redistricting

11.3.2  Section 2 Beyond Redistricting

11.4     Racial Gerrymandering Claims and the Future of the Voting Rights Act

 

12.           Election Administration

12.1     Introduction: Florida 2000 as the Modern Start of the Voting Wars

12.2     The Fight Over Voter Identification Laws, and Broader Disputes over

Election Administration Laws Since 2000

12.3     NVRA, HAVA, UOCAVA, and Limits on the Federal Power to Regulate

Elections

 

Part IV—Campaign Finance

 

13.           Introduction to Campaign Finance: Spending Limits from Buckley to Citizens United

13.1     Introduction

13.2     The Buckley v. Valeo Framework

13.2.1  Before Buckley: The History of U.S. Campaign Finance Law

13.2.2  Buckley’s Major Holdings on Contributions and Expenditures

13.3     Spending Limits After Buckley

            13.3.1  Before Citizens United

13.3.2  Citizens United and Beyond

 

14.           Campaign Contribution Limits from Buckley to Citizens United and Beyond

14.1     The Path from Buckley to Deference

14.2     New Skepticism about Contribution Limits

14.3     The Rise of Super PACs and Other Outside Groups

 

15.           Campaign Finance Disclosure

15.1     The Path from Buckley to McIntyre

15.2     After McIntyre: Broad Disclosure Laws and a Narrow Harassment

Exemption

15.3     The Rise of 501(c) Organizations and the Failures of Federal Disclosure

Law

 

16.           Public Financing

16.1     Why Public Financing?

16.2     Constitutional Issues with Public Financing Plans

16.2.1  Discrimination Against Minor Parties and Voluntariness

16.2.2  Impermissibility of Matching Funds Tied to Others’

Campaign Spending

 

 

Share this: