"The Supreme Court and Election Law: In Search of Doctrinal Specificity"

Ned Foley has posted this commentary [corrected link] at EL@M. It begins:

The Supreme Court opened its term yesterday with an election law case, Washington State Grange v. Washington, and it will hear oral argument in another one tomorrow, New York State Board of Elections v. Lopez Torres. Last week, it added a third to its calendar, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, better known as the Indiana voter identification case, which instantly overshadowed the others and became one of the handful of cases that Court-watchers will watch most closely.

All three cases share a common attribute: they will be challenging for the Court because they each require distinguishing when one burden is too much, when another is not, based on nothing more than the vague phrases of the Constitution's equality and liberty guarantees. Take the voter identification for purposes of illustration. Although some of the rhetoric surrounding the case might make one think any voter identification requirement is inherently evil, or inherently innocuous, depending on one's point of view, the truth of the matter is the determining the constitutionality of specific voter identification laws will require a much more nuanced analysis, focusing on the factual details of the particular law at issue.

Posted by Rick Hasen at October 2, 2007 11:28 AM