In the wake of substantial spending by Amazon (and others) in 2019 city council elections, Seattle contemplates a Clean Campaigns Act purporting to limit contributions to Super PACs, and to limit spending from corporations with more than 1% ownership from … Continue reading
Category Archives: election law and constitutional law
Bloomberg: An unusually large number of amicus briefs filed by friends of a charity tied to the Koch brothers have flooded the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the justices to nix a California law requiring charities to disclose their largest donors … Continue reading
Marc Elias in WaPo about his lawsuits on the ballot-order statutes giving unilateral pole position to candidates of one party. … Continue reading
Rick already mentioned a few of the exceptional election-related events at AALS so far. There are still several to come, including my stint tomorrow at 8:30 as least valuable player on a 2020 census panel with Dale Ho, Christina Mora, … Continue reading
The real story isn’t that state party officials are defending state party associational rights under the First Amendmetn (even if they also benefit opposing parties). The real story is the practical recognition that litigation now begins to creep up on … Continue reading
Josh Blackman, at the Volokh Conspiracy, offers a timely reminder of the 2009 ACS essay compilation — “The Constitution in 2020” – with a progressive vision of future constitutional law. The compilation included, among others, a piece by Pam Karlan … Continue reading
The Intercept traces funding from foreign nationals through American corporations to super PACs. … Continue reading
Michael Li, in Slate, on the census, citizenship, and representation. Related: the Council on Foreign Relations gets in on the discussion too. … Continue reading
Mississippi cites Gill v. Whitford in contesting challengers’ standing to contest the requirement that statewide candidates win both a majority of the state and a majority of state house districts. And the Court’s refusal to recognize that redistricting problems are … Continue reading
Thomas Berry makes the case that it does, in Yale’s Notice & Comment administrative law blog. He’s promised more on enforcing that reading tomorrow, with a hint of a note of caution. One note: whether the basic argument is right … Continue reading
Linda Greenhouse on the rule of law’s near-miss in the census case, and its aftermath. … Continue reading
And they’re (correctly) not happy. … Continue reading
The AP has a story about a lawsuit challenging the requirement for winning statewide office that candidates win both a majority of the popular vote and a plurality of the vote in the majority of Mississippi state house districts. … Continue reading
Trial has started up in Florida over the law automatically placing candidates of the governor’s party in the first position of the ballot. I’ve been watching this case pretty closely; it’s a really interesting test of the prevailing constitutional doctrine … Continue reading
Guy-Uriel Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer have a new piece forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, on partisan gerrymandering and justiciability: This paper examines the Court’s decision in Gil v. Whitford. It advances two claims. First, it provides a comprehensive account … Continue reading
Available on SSRN. From the abstract: Litigants seeking to lift burdens on the right to vote and judges adjudicating these claims have an unremarkable problem—what is the benchmark for measuring the nature of these burdens? Legal theories abound for claims … Continue reading
Earlier today, Rick noted the 5th Circuit’s opinion on Texas’s voter ID law. I agree with much of his critique of the court’s resolution of the section 3(c) preclearance issue. In my post on the Texas redistricting cases earlier this … Continue reading
Yesterday, as this blog noted, Governor Cooper filed his brief in his effort to block the last-minute changes the North Carolina legislature made to abolish the existing state board of elections and replace it with a newly configured one. The … Continue reading
Seth Tillman blogs. … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
(with Joey Fishkin, University of Texas Law School) Bob Bauer just offered a thoughtful and engaging commentary on our work and a new report by the Brennan Center, both focused on the relationship between the political parties and campaign finance. … Continue reading
With Joey Fishkin, University of Texas Law School The Brennan Center has just released a new report on the future of campaign finance. There are going to be a lot of reports like these during the next few years as … Continue reading
Guy-Urïel Charles and Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, have a new piece in the Iowa Law Review. I offered a commentary, here. Just to give you a flavor for the piece is, here’s a brief excerpt from my introduction, which offers a rough summary … Continue reading
Coauthored with Joseph Fishkin, University of Texas Law School In yesterday’s post, we described how major functions once performed by official party organizations are migrating instead to what we call shadow parties—groups situated outside the official party apparatus, but clearly … Continue reading
Coauthored with Joseph Fishkin, University of Texas Law School A recent story perfectly embodied the central puzzle in a paper that we recently published in the Supreme Court Review. The story tells about the war between the Koch brothers … Continue reading
Over at Balkinization, I’ve been blogging (here, here, here, and here) about the benefits associated with spillovers, which occur when one state’s policies affect citizens of another state. Most of those arguments have to do with my other field, federalism. … Continue reading
The DNC Executive Committee has just endorsed the idea that we should amend the Constitution to add a right to vote. I’m entirely in favor of a constitutional right to vote. But I’m against amending the Constitution to add it. … Continue reading
For the last few days, I’ve been blogging about a new paper of mine on Windsor v. United States over on Balkinization (here, here, and here). I offer a new spin on it, one that invokes Ely’s Democracy and Distrust … Continue reading
Justin here, with a thought on last week’s oral argument in two consolidated cases about Alabama’s redistricting process. There’s an issue lurking at the heart of the dispute that may be difficult to spot in the transcript. The cases concern the … Continue reading
And, of course, we’ve now got a SCOTUS ruling on Texas ID. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, the Court refused to vacate the 5th Circuit’s stay. In real-person, that means that despite a full trial leading to a … Continue reading
Bauer finds the difference between Judges Easterbrook and Posner (and the difference between Crawford and the instant Wisconsin struggle) to be their consideration of legislative motive. Maybe. But I think there’s (perhaps also) a difference between the quality of the factual … Continue reading
Still more news from the courts. Kentucky’s ban on electioneering was struck down today. The ban extended 300 feet from the entrance to any building used for voting, and plaintiff John Russell originally brought suit to ensure that he could … Continue reading
Fascinating. Farfetched, but fascinating. … Continue reading
From the Brennan Center and CLC, and from Texas’s AG. … Continue reading
Rick just quoted from Judge Costa’s concurrence in the 5th Circuit panel’s order — and I’d like to highlight one part of that concurrence. Judge Costa says, citing cases from Ohio and North Carolina, that “in two recent decisions, [the … Continue reading
From the editorial board of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. … Continue reading
And also two from Michael Hiltzik. One on Posner and voter ID, one on Chevron’s hefty spending on Richmond, CA, municipal races (with a pointed infographic). And I’ll repeat my question from Friday: anyone know if $3 million is the largest … Continue reading
Andrew Cohen connects Judge Ramos to Judge Posner in The Week. … Continue reading
Today’s editorial in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. … Continue reading
Looks like the 5th Circuit may act by the end of the weekend or first thing next week. … Continue reading
The Journal-Sentinel reviews the 7th Circuit’s 5-5 split over rehearing the panel opinion reversing the lower court’s injunction. … Continue reading
The Wall St. Journal’s week-end summary of the recent hullaballoo. … Continue reading
The N.Y. Times parses what’s happened and what’s next regarding the most prominent election administration tussles this week. … Continue reading
NPR’s latest, on All Things Considered. … Continue reading
More breaking news: The 7th Circuit, sitting en banc, just split again 5-5 over whether to review the panel opinion’s decision on the merits. Judge Posner had apparently asked for the vote himself, and wrote 28 pages disagreeing with the … Continue reading
So promises the AG. … Continue reading
Reports from AP, HuffPo, LA Times, MSNBC, NPR, NY Times, Politico, Reuters, USA Today, Wall St. Journal. And from the plaintiffs’ counsel — Brennan Center, CLC, and LDF react. … Continue reading
Rick says that tonight’s TX ID case (which does, indeed, enter a permanent injunction against the ID law – on pp. 142-143 of the opinion) creates a huge Purcell problem. I’m not so sure. To be clear, I can understand … Continue reading
Texas-sized news out of the Lone Star State. A federal court has struck down Texas’s voter ID law. It violates the Voting Rights Act, it violates the constitutional prohibition on poll taxes, it violates the constitutional prohibition of unjustified burdens, … Continue reading
Prof. Chris Elmendorf, over at the Election Law @ Moritz site, dives deep on the 7th Circuit’s WI voter ID decision. It begins: Earlier this week Rick Hasen blasted Judge Easterbook’s opinion upholding Wisconsin’s voter ID requirement as cavalier with … Continue reading