From APSA’s Law and Courts Section, featuring short papers by J.H. Snider, Sandy Levinson, John Dinan, and Carol Weissert.  Here’s a description:

When analyzing the consequences of elections for the development of the U.S. Constitution, scholars concentrate on elections for president and senate, on account of their role in selecting Supreme Court justices who are understood to play a key role in bringing about changes in understandings of federal constitutional provisions. But in the 50 states, voters have a wider range of opportunities to influence the development of constitutions and in a more direct fashion….

Law and courts scholars who have turned their attention to the state level have generated a number of studies of judicial elections. Legislature-referred and citizen-initiated constitutional amendments have also generated a fair amount of analysis. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the periodic revision commission and periodic convention referendum, institutions that will be on display in a 2017 New York convention referendum and 2017 Florida revision commission and were examined in a short course at the 2016 APSA conference organized by J.H. Snider. Thanks to Law and Courts newsletter editor Todd Collins for inviting us to share some of the presentations, arguments, and conclusions from the short course.

The short course is here.