Release:

 LexisNexis® Legal & Professional and the LexisNexis® Rule of Law Foundation today announced the launch of the LexisNexis® U.S. Voting Laws & Legislation Center. The initial release of the tool provides free, public access to a curated and expanding collection of U.S. federal and state election and voting laws, including proposed legislation, codes, voting related information, and graphics.

Leveraging legislative data from State Net® and codes from Lexis+®, the U.S. Voting Laws & Legislation Center provides full-text access and near real-time updates to existing and proposed state and federal laws, presenting law makers, journalists, non-profit organizations, legal professionals, academics, students and the general public with timely, fact-based, unbiased records of voting and election laws.

For proposed legislation, an interactive heat map of the U.S. highlights proposed legislation across all 50 states, with 10 issue-based filters, such as early voting, to help researchers expedite and narrow down their search. For existing, enacted legislation, the Voting Center lets users compare data in table form across different states on issues such as no excuse absentee voting. . . .

This looks to be a pretty useful resource. Here’s the link: https://www.lexisnexisrolfoundation.org/voting-laws.aspx#/votinglaw/landing Among other things, “The Center provides full-text access and near real-time updates to more than 20,000 existing state and federal voting laws and more than 2,000 proposed bills, with interactive data visualizations, customizable, sharable and downloadable research content, and select news coverage from several LexisNexis resources. “

You can download the free Supplement here. The Supplement is current through the Supreme Court’s October 2021 term ending June 30, 2022, and includes excerpts from the district court’s recent decision in Eastman v. Thompson, involving potential criminal charges connected to the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.

The newest edition of the Lowenstein et al Election Law casebook is now shipping after some supply chain delays, and the electronic teacher’s manual is available from the publisher. If you are an instructor and need it, please reach out!

Global supply chain issues are affecting the arrival time of books, and the 7th edition of Lowenstein, Hasen, Tokaji, and Stephanopoulos, Election Law–Cases and Materials is running a bit late—shipping by the end of this week.

If you are an instructor and you’ve assigned the book for the spring semester and need to get electronic access to a chapter or two for your students, please reach out to me. And if you are a student looking for the book, please pass this message onto your instructor if you haven’t heard anything yet about book availability.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

I’m pleased to announce that the new 7th edition of Election Law–Cases and Materials is being printed now and will be ready in time for spring classes. Here is a detailed table of contents. The accompanying teacher’s manual should be ready in early December. Here’s a description of the new edition, and please reach out with any questions:

Election Law

Cases and Materials

Seventh Edition

by Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Richard L. Hasen, Daniel P. Tokaji, Nicholas Stephanopoulos

Forthcoming December 2021 • casebound

Tags: Election Law

2022 Teacher’s Manual forthcoming

The new student-friendly seventh edition of Election Law: Cases and Materials fully covers developments in election law through 2021, including extensive coverage of recent partisan and racial gerrymandering challenges; campaign finance cases in the Citizens United era; and challenges to new voter identification laws and other voting restrictions. It continues to include perspectives from law and political science, and it is appropriate in both law and political science courses. The extensive campaign finance coverage makes the book appropriate for a campaign finance seminar as well.

New material in this edition includes coverage of the Supreme Court’s most recent cases on the Voting Rights Act and vote denial (Brnovich), donor disclosure and the First Amendment (AFPF v. Bonta), campaign contributions (Thompson v. Hebdon), bribery (Kelly v. United States), and the Electoral College (Chiafalo v. Washington); discussion of controversies and litigation surrounding the 2020 election and COVID-19-related election administration changes; and a completely rewritten section on partisan gerrymandering, including an edited version of the Supreme Court’s June 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause.

If you are a professor teaching in this field you may request a complimentary copy.

Here:

Recent Top Papers (60 days)

As of: 06 Aug 2021 – 05 Oct 2021

The Seventh Edition of Lowenstein, Hasen, Tokaji, and Stephanapoulos, Election Law–Cases and Materials will be ready for use in time for Spring classes. I’m very excited about this new edition! Please reach out if you are an instructor and you will need early access to page proofs (which we are going through now). Here’s the book description:

The new student-friendly Seventh Edition of Election Law: Cases and Materials fully covers developments in election law through 2021, including extensive coverage of recent partisan and racial gerrymandering challenges; campaign finance cases in the Citizens United era; and challenges to new voter identification laws and other voting restrictions. It continues to include perspectives from law and political science, and it is appropriate in both law and political science courses. The extensive campaign finance coverage makes the book appropriate for a campaign finance seminar as well.

New material in this edition includes coverage of the Supreme Court’s most recent cases on the Voting Rights Act and vote denial (Brnovich), donor disclosure and the First Amendment (AFPF v. Bonta), campaign contributions (Thompson v. Hebdon), bribery (Kelly v. United States), and the Electoral College (Chiafalo v. Washington); discussion of controversies and litigation surrounding the 2020 election and COVID-19-related election administration changes; and a completely rewritten section on partisan gerrymandering, including an edited version of the Supreme Court’s June 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause.

An updated teacher’s manual is coming as well. Thanks for your interest!

In case this is of use to instructors.

I’m delighted to share the news, scooped by Politico, that my UCI Law colleague David Kaye and I have started the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center at the law school. Why such a Center?

As I state in our opening press release, American democracy is under increasing strain, and the 2020 election exacerbated threats to the rule of law and to public confidence in fair elections. Much of that is thanks to the rise of social media. The new Center will look at what’s wrong, and what can be done, to strengthen democratic institutions in the U.S. and around the world.

And as David Kaye says, ““We are launching the Center at a moment when democratic participation is under attack not only in the United States but worldwide. In addition to a domestic focus rooted in the fundamentals of American law, we will bring a global perspective, using human rights norms to research and advocate for freedom of expression and public participation as central pillars of democratic societies.”

As we explain at the Center’s website:

Established in 2021 after the contentious 2020 U.S. Presidential elections, which culminated in the dangerous January 6, 2021 insurrection in the United States Capitol, the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center at UCI Law is unique in its focus among U.S. and global institutions. It is dedicated solely to advancing an understanding of, and offering means to counter, threats to the stability and legitimacy of democratic governments exacerbated by the unregulated growth of digital media and other technological changes in mass communication. The Center will facilitate deep scholarship on American law, politics, and democracy as well as on global norms and institutions.

We have assembled a world-class advisory board to help guide our mission, which is to strengthen democracy and the rule of law in the digital age both in the U.S. and around the world. I’m blown away by the folks who signed on to advise us.

And we are going to hit the ground running, with a series of free, virtual events, open to all in the fall. Among the most important events is a conference on Election Subversion, on Friday Sept. 24. Speakers include Georgia SOS Brad Raffensperger. Here’s the tentative agenda:

The Fair Elections and Free Speech Center will also have a three-part lunch series on challenges in global elections, beginning w a Sept. 1 event looking at disinformation in elections in Uganda, Israel, and the Netherlands.

will also have a three-part lunch series on disinformation in American elections. One panel features Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Orange County Registrar Neal Kelly. Others will feature social scientists and law profs.

I’m also excited to moderate a Fair Elections and Free Speech Center conversation on Sept. 9, Is the U.S. Constitution Up to the Task of Preserving American Democracy?, with Jack Balkin, Michele Goodwin, and Michael Klarman.

We have much bigger plans for the Center going forward, as we begin our building and fundraising efforts. David Kaye and I cannot thank former UCI Law Dean Song Richardson enough for her early leadership on this project, and the tremendous law school staff.

You can watch this video, in which David Kaye and I explain why we started the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center, and what we hope to do:

The 2021 Supplement to Lowenstein, Hasen, Tokaji, and Stephanopoulos, Election Law–Cases and Materials (6th ed. 2017) is now available for free download at this link: https://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2021-election-law-supp-final.pdf.

The 2021 Supplement is up-to-date through the end of the Supreme Court’s October 2020 term ending July 2021. The new material includes coverage of the Supreme Court’s most recent cases on the Voting Rights Act and vote denial (Brnovich), donor disclosure and the First Amendment (AFPF v. Bonta), campaign contributions (Thompson v. Hebdon), bribery (Kelly v. United States), and the Electoral College (Chiafalo v. Washington); discussion of controversies and litigation surrounding the 2020 election, and COVID-19-related election litigation and election administration changes; and a completely rewritten section on partisan gerrymandering, including an edited version of the Supreme Court’s June 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause. It also includes coverage of cases and developments concerning the census, partisan gerrymandering, voter purges, voter identification laws, political apparel at the polling place, campaign finance, bribery, and Voting Rights Act challenges to redistricting.

(The 7th edition of the casebook will be published by Carolina Academic Press in January 2022 in time for Winter/Spring 2022 courses.)

Announcement via email:

The third edition of Voting Rights and Election Law: Cases, Explanatory Notes, and Problems, by Michael Dimino, Brad Smith, and Michael Solimine, has just been printed and is available from Carolina Academic Press.  (ISBN 978-1-5310-1906-8)

Here is the publisher’s description, taken from the website:

Voting Rights and Election Law is a teachable, yet sophisticated, casebook that takes readers through the law of the political process, from the right to vote through the tabulation (and re-tabulation) of votes. Along the way, the book explores and explains the law of districting (including gerrymandering and the one-person, one-vote doctrine); the Voting Rights Act; ballot access and ballot design; free-speech rights of candidates, parties, and ordinary citizens; campaign finance; and the election administration.
This book presents the law of politics in a thorough but understandable way that approaches election law primarily as law rather than as an exercise in political theory.  Narrative introductions and notes clearly set forth and explain the law, and cases are edited to allow students to appreciate judicial reasoning by reading the courts’ own words. Compared to other casebooks in the field, Voting Rights and Election Law emphasizes the text of leading court opinions rather than commentary and competing political theories about elections and democracy. Students are, however, encouraged through notes and questions to examine and to question the empirical assumptions and theoretical premises behind the opinions, paying particular attention to the proper role for the courts in policing politics. Frequent problems give students and instructors an opportunity to examine how the principles of election law should be applied to realistic situations—reinforcing that election law is not merely a subject of historical or theoretical interest but one that shapes political outcomes year after year.

The third edition is the product of a comprehensive review, update, and streamlining of the second. The third edition presents more material more efficiently, and as a result the third edition is both more thorough in its coverage and clearer in its explanations, while being slightly shorter than the second edition. The book’s organization has been rethought and adjusted to make the presentation more effective.  The materials on the political-question doctrine have been revised to account for the increased attention that has been given to partisan gerrymanding and to the use of independent districting commissions. Material on congressional power to enact the original Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been moved from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3, where it joins the (slimmed-down) coverage of preclearance, which has declined in significance after Shelby County v. Holder.
The coverage of third parties and ballot access now joins the term-limits material to form a new Chapter 6 that fully considers states’ power to design, and to control access to, the ballot. The examination of the protection for anonymous speech has been combined with the materials on campaign-finance disclosure rules to form a new Chapter 9 that comprehensively considers the tradeoffs between disclosure and anonymity. The coverage of election administration has been thoroughly redesigned to cover all manner of election-day rules in a single chapter that includes examination of legal questions that have arisen as states have adjusted their election laws to account for the COVID-19 pandemic.
This new structure also allows the book to devote attention to the electoral college and to other federal rules that affect the casting and counting of votes, even as elections are administered by state and local officials.

Election Law 2020 Supplement

The 2020 Supplement to Lowenstein, Hasen, Tokaji, & Stephanopoulos, Election Law–Cases and Materials (6th ed.) is up-to-date through the end of the Supreme Court’s October 2019 term ending July 2020. The new material includes coverage of the Supreme Court’s most recent cases on campaign contributions (Thompson v. Hebdon), bribery (Kelly v. United States), and the Electoral College (Chiafalo v. Washington), discussion of COVID-19-related election litigation and election administration changes, and  a completely rewritten section on partisan gerrymandering, including an edited version of the Supreme Court’s June 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause. It also includes coverage of cases and developments concerning the census, partisan gerrymandering, voter purges, voter identification laws, political apparel at the polling place, campaign finance, bribery, and Voting Rights Act challenges to redistricting.

You may download the supplement at this link.