Category Archives: Supreme Court

“Supreme Court Says Judges Are Above Politics. It May Hear a Case Testing That View.”

September 16, 2019, 7:06 amSupreme CourtRick Hasen

Adam Liptak NYT Sidebar: The court will decide whether to hear the case, Carney v. Adams, No. 19-309, sometime this fall.Delaware’s Constitution says that judges affiliated with any one political party can make up no more than a “bare… Continue reading

Joan Biskupic Scoop: Chief Justice Roberts Was For Inclusion of the Citizenship Question on the Census Before He Was Against It

September 12, 2019, 10:15 amcensus litigation, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

Joan confirms what many of us suspected from reading the opinions in Dep’t of Commerce v. NY: Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote against President Donald Trump’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, but… Continue reading

“Koch-founded charity asks for Supreme Court help to keep donor list secret”

August 28, 2019, 8:29 pmcampaign finance, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

Reuters: The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a libertarian nonprofit founded by Charles and David Koch, filed a petition this week at the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to review a 2018 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of… Continue reading

“The Supreme Court in a Polarized Era: Is Legitimacy at Risk?”

August 14, 2019, 5:45 pmpolitical polarization, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

Logan Struther and Shana Kushner Gadarian have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: We examine the role that mass perceptions of the Supreme Court’s institutional nature—particularly how “political” it is—plays in assessments of its legitimacy. In a… Continue reading

I Was on The Hill.TV’s “Rising” Talking About My Atlantic Article About a New Campaign Finance Case Heading to the Supreme Court

August 14, 2019, 7:41 amcampaign finance, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

Watch here: The Atlantic article is: Unlimited Donations to Candidates, Coming Soon?

“Unlimited Donations to Candidates, Coming Soon? Former Solicitor General Paul Clement may get the Supreme Court closer to killing what’s left of campaign-finance limits.”

July 26, 2019, 6:17 amcampaign finance, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

I have written this piece for The Atlantic. It begins: During the George W. Bush administration, then–Solicitor General Paul Clement successfully defended the constitutionality of the 2002 McCain-Feingold law, which tightened electioneering and fundraising regulations. Can Clement now get traction… Continue reading

New volume of the Harvard Law & Policy Review is out

July 15, 2019, 11:00 amcampaign finance, ethics investigations, political equality, political parties, redistricting, Supreme CourtJustin Levitt

Chock full of election-law goodies. Among other pieces: Elizabeth Warren, Foreword (on corruption and faith in government)Jeffrey Clements, “But It Will Happen”: A Constitutional Amendment to Secure Political Equality in Election Spending and RepresentationViki Harrison,… Continue reading

The Trump (Second) Cave on the Citizenship Question is a Double Victory for the Rule of Law

July 11, 2019, 3:08 pmcensus litigation, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

President Trump’s Speech this afternoon in which he said that the Administration would give up on efforts to add a citizenship question to the census is a victory for the rule of law. Many people were predicting that Trump would… Continue reading

President Trump Planning Some Kind of “Executive Action” on the Census: What Comes Next? Not Necessarily a Constitutional Crisis

July 11, 2019, 8:37 amcensus litigation, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

I’m seeing a lot of hyperventilating on Twitter and elsewhere about how President Trump is about to start a constitutional crisis through an executive order that would mandate inclusion of the citizenship question on the census. If Trump actually ordered… Continue reading

Derek Muller on Rucho and Partisan Gerrymandering

July 7, 2019, 5:17 pmredistricting, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

Here, at the Public Discourse.

The Evenwel Gambit

July 6, 2019, 10:14 amcensus litigation, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

Joey Fishkin: So that leaves what I’d call the Evenwel Gambit: fess up, selectively, to Real Reason 2. Claim that you want to add the citizenship question to the Census in order to enable the CVAP-based drawing of district… Continue reading

Gaming Out the Census Citizenship Question Endgame: What Comes Next, and How Will Things End?

July 5, 2019, 7:47 amcensus litigation, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

I thought I’d pull together some thoughts on the issue of whether the Trump Administration will try again to add a citizenship question to the census, after sharing some earlier thoughts across this blog, to NPR, and at Slate… Continue reading

Rebecca Green: A Spade is a Spade (Rucho Symposium)

July 5, 2019, 7:00 amredistricting, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

The following is a guest post from Rebecca Green, part of the symposium on Partisan Gerrymandering after Rucho: The Rucho decision is hard to get your head around. Plaintiffs presented two clean cases with clear “smoking guns”: partisan… Continue reading

Moon Duchin: How to Reason from the Universe of Maps (The Normative Logic of Map Sampling) (Rucho symposium)

July 5, 2019, 6:56 amredistricting, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

The following is a guest post from Moon Duchin, part of the symposium on Partisan Gerrymandering after Rucho: Justice Kagan’s dissent in Rucho states in its opening paragraphs: “The majority’s abdication comes just when courts across the country,… Continue reading