Bozeman Daily Chronicle: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a case that challenged Montana’s law on disclosing the spending for political ads within 60 days of an election.In August 2019, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Montana’s … Continue reading
Category Archives: Supreme Court
Listen. … Continue reading
Adam Liptak for the NYT: The Supreme Court seemed ready on Wednesday to allow states to require members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for the presidential candidates they had pledged to support.In two arguments concerning “faithless electors” … Continue reading
Steve Mazie for The Economist. … Continue reading
NYT: The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously overturned the convictions of two defendants in the “Bridgegate” scandal.The case resulted from a decision in 2013 by associates of Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey, to close access lanes to the George … Continue reading
Here at SSRN. … Continue reading
Linda Greenhouse NYT column. … Continue reading
Tony Gaughan has posted this draft on SSRN (American U. L. Rev.). Here is the abstract: One of the most controversial decisions in the modern history of the Supreme Court is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In a 5-4 … Continue reading
Larry at Medium: It is so rare to be able to write such a headline. But when it is true, given the rightful importance that the Dean of Election Law’s opinion has to so many, it is an important headline … Continue reading
Over at AZ Law. … Continue reading
Cert denied in LULAC v. Edwards Aquifer Authority. Here is my earlier coverage. … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
Nina Totenberg for NPR’s Morning Edition: So, it was no surprise when the conservative majority refused to make even a modest accommodation to the pandemic. What was surprising was the tone of the opinion. Critics of the opinion, including some Roberts defenders, … Continue reading
You can find it here (Derek Muller and David Post have first two entries.) … Continue reading
Marcia Coyle for PBS. … Continue reading
Guy Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer in The Monkey Cage: On April 7, thousands of Wisconsin citizens braved a global pandemic to show up at the polls to vote. Some commentators blamed Republicans in the legislature for forcing voters to choose between their … Continue reading
Watch. … Continue reading
Order. And it appears that the oral argument will be livestreamed. This means we should have an opinion by the end of June unless the Court extends the term. … Continue reading
A sharp reader emails: Note the following passage from the Supreme Court’s per curiam opinion in RNC v. DNC: The unusual nature of the District Court’s order allowing ballots to be mailed and postmarked after election day is perhaps best … Continue reading
There has been a ton of commentary on the Supreme Court’s split decision in the Wisconsin voting case, which reversed a district court order allowing absentee ballots received by April 13 whether or not they were postmarked by the April … Continue reading
Linda Greenhouse NYT column. … Continue reading
NYT: In a pair of extraordinary rulings on Monday, the highest courts in Wisconsin and the nation split along ideological lines to reject Democratic efforts to defer voting in Tuesday’s elections in the state given the coronavirus pandemic. Election law experts said the stark … Continue reading
Joan puts Wisconsin in context. … Continue reading
Michael Morley has written this extensive analysis of today’s developments, which begins: This post offers a new perspective on the Supreme Court’s emergency order in Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19A1016 (U.S. Apr. 6, 2020). It explains … Continue reading
Interesting thread starts here: I want to make one point about the Supreme Court's decision in the Wisconsin case that I'm surprised has not been made. The Supreme Court & the federal courts more broadly have actually not done a … Continue reading
You can read the opinion and dissent here. In some ways, it is unsurprising that the Court divided 5-4 (conservative/Republican Justices against liberal/Democratic Justices) on a question whether the emergency created by COVID-19 and the dangers of in-person voting justified … Continue reading
You can find the filing here. I think that they have a strong argument about application of the Purcell Principle: Applicants rely heavily on Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 4-5 (2006), in which this Court cautioned that “[c]ourt orders … Continue reading
You can find the filing at this link. As expected the Purcell Principle plays a major role in the argument here, the idea that courts should not make last minute changes in election rules because doing so could confuse voters … Continue reading
David Gans: The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder left a gaping hole in our Constitution’s promise of democracy and opened the door to rampant voter suppression. Now COVID-19 is making things exponentially worse. … Continue reading
No surprise here. I’ve always found the constitutional arguments against it incredibly weak. … Continue reading
Docket at SCOTUS, and here’s more from CREW on the case. … Continue reading
I have posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Georgetown Law Journal Online). Here is the abstract: The United States Supreme Court’s conservative majority has taken the Court’s election jurisprudence on a pro-partisanship turn which gives political actors freer range to … Continue reading
Lisa Graves oped in The Guardian. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for The Atlantic, part of the rollout of my new book, Election Meltdown. It begins: Among the many strange and worrying truths about American elections, one has a tendency to get lost: The path to … Continue reading
Listen to NPR’s On Point: It’s been 10 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on Citizens United. We’ll look back at the last decade and take stock of the fallout. Guests Carrie Levine, senior reporter at the Center for … Continue reading
Brendan Fischer for Slate. … Continue reading
Abby Wood for The Monkey Cage. … Continue reading
Reupping this Slate piece of mine that ran in December, on what the opinion has meant in the last decade: In 2010, the largest reported individual contributors to federal campaigns in American politics were Robert and Doylene Perry, owners of … Continue reading
Brad Smith WSJ oped. … Continue reading
Covered on the Business Scholarship Podcast. … Continue reading
Video: ACS held a panel discussion on the state of campaign finance on January 16, 2020. Titled “Revisiting Campaign Finance Regulation 10 Years After Citizens United,” the event featured Jason Abel, Lee Goodman, Chisun Lee, and Ciara Torres-Spelliscy and was moderated by Michael Tomasky. A decade after the … Continue reading
Scott Blackburn analysis for IFS. … Continue reading
From the Center for Responsive Politics: A secretive network spending millions of dollars to confirm President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court picks terminated multiple 501(c)(4) nonprofit nodes last year while funneling money to an even more opaque limited-liability company, further obscuring the network’s funding … Continue reading
WLF: What is the judicial role? Are judges mere umpires who call balls and strikes based solely on rules made by others? Or are judges lawmakers in their own right, creating laws and making public policy? The U.S. Supreme Court … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate, part of their coverage of the end of the decade. It begins: In 2010, the largest reported individual contributors to federal campaigns in American politics were Robert and Doylene Perry, owners of Perry … Continue reading
Read the cert. petition in National Association for Gun Rights v. Mangan. … Continue reading
NYT reports. My earlier coverage is here. … Continue reading
I’ve been keeping my eye on Thompson v. Hebdon v. Hebdon for a long time. In this case, leading Supreme Court attorney Paul Clement filed a petition for the Supreme Court to take a case challenging Alaska’s campaign contribution limits … Continue reading
Supreme Court takes no action yet again on major campaign finance petition. Court could eventually grant, or, perhaps at this point more likely now would be either some kind of summary action or a dissent from denial of cert. from … Continue reading
The San Francisco Review of Book’s Joseph Cotto interviewed me about my book on Justice Scalia’s jurisprudence and legacy. Watch: … Continue reading