Assuming the Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law on July 1

election law biz

On July 1, I will officially be the Gary T. Schwarz Endowed Chair in Law at UCLA (along with a Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) and the Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project).

Alhthough it is of course an honor to be awarded any academic chair, this chair is really special to me. Gary was a professor of mine and on my doctoral dissertation committee when I was at UCLA. He was brilliant and quirky, a voracious reader and a keen legal mind. He was intellectually curious and prolific. He profoundly shaped tort doctrine through his scholarship and through his work as a Reporter on the first part of the mammoth Restatement (Third) of Torts for the American Law Institute. He could translate complex doctrine into understandable prose and test the latest academic theory against real evidence.

Most importantly for me as a student, Gary was an relentless cheerleader when I sought work as an academic, getting on the phone to his many contacts across the country, and an unremitting coach to push me to do better on my scholarship. You couldn’t slip any sloppy reasoning or half-formed thought by Gary. When he offered praise, it really meant that I had accomplished something.

It’s not lost on me as I approach 60 that Gary died early and surprisingly of a malignant brain tumor when he was 61. It was a loss for all of us. I want to think that some of my work (with Doug Laycock) on one of the last parts of the Third Restatement of Torts will be a fitting tribute to his legacy.

I take over the chair from Eugene Volokh, who takes emeritus status and moves onto Stanford’s Hoover Institution July 1. Eugene was a year behind me at UCLA Law School, and we began our spirited but always cordial debates over the nature of law in Dan Lowenstein’s 1990 Election Law course. Dan, another of my exemplary mentors, wrote to me: “I cannot imagine a better chair to hold than one named after Gary Schwartz.” Indeed.

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“Supreme Court won’t take up Georgia dispute over ‘at-large’ elections and minority vote dilution”

Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

CNN:

The Supreme Court won’t take up a case challenging Georgia’s system for electing its public utility board in a defeat for Black voters who argued the so-called “at-large” electoral system diluted their votes.

The justices’ refusal to get involved will potentially make it much harder for challenges to such at-large systems of voting – that challengers call a “relic of Jim Crow” – to move forward in three states in the South.

The five members of Georgia’s Public Service Commission are each elected in staggered, statewide votes – a system that a federal judge said violated the Voting Rights Act. That ruling was then reversed by the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, prompting the Black voters’ appeal to the Supreme Court.

In declining to take up the case Monday, the Supreme Court did not say anything on the merits of the arguments. However, the move leaves standing an 11th Circuit precedent that could affect other Voting Rights Act lawsuits brought in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, the three states the circuit covers.

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“Racist slurs and death threats: The dangerous life of a Georgia elections official

chicanery, election administration

Stateline:

When Milton Kidd leaves work at the end of the day, he slips out the back door of the domed Douglas County Courthouse, avoiding the public entrance where people might berate him or demand his home address.

He never takes the same route home two days in a row, and he makes random turns to avoid being followed.

Kidd, a Black man, has a very dangerous job: He is the elections and voter registration director for Douglas County.

“Milton Kidd is a nasty n***** living on tax money like the scum he is,” one voter wrote in an email Kidd shared with Stateline. “Living on tax money, like a piece of low IQ n***** shit.”

Another resident from Kidd’s county of 149,000 west of Atlanta left him a voicemail.

“I don’t know if you’re aware, Milton, but the American people have set a precedent for what they do to f***ing tyrants and oppressors who occupy government office,” the caller said. “Yep, back in the 1700s, they were called the British and the f***ing American people got so fed up with the f***ing British being dicks, kind of like you, and then they just f***ing killed all the f***ing British.”

Kidd smiled incredulously as he shared his security routine and the hate-filled messages that inspired it. He is dumbfounded that he’s the target of such vitriol for administering elections in 2024 — but he knows where it originated.

The lies told by former President Donald Trump, who faces state felony charges for trying to pressure Georgia officials to change the 2020 results, have resonated with many Douglas County voters, Kidd said. Now this nonpartisan official, like many others across the country, is forced to face their ire.

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With the First Presidential Debate Thursday Night, I Don’t Expect Trump Immunity Decision Until Friday at the Earliest

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has over a dozen cases left to decide. The next date for announcing opinions is Wednesday. The Court has not yet announced whether there will be opinions on Thursday or Friday of this week (I suspect on both days). It is also quite possible, given that almost all the remaining opinions are major ones, for some opinions to be released early next week, taking us into July (that happens occasionally at the Court).

The Court really slow walked the Trump immunity, case, all but making the completion of a trial before the election in D.C. on 2020 election subversion charges impossible. Given the delay, I don’t think any of the Justices think that it will make a difference if the opinion (if ready) comes out this Wednesday compared to next Monday in terms of timing for a trial.

But it would be huge to the debate if the day before or the day of the debate the Supreme Court announced some principles of Trump immunity. Whatever the Court does (and I expect they will recognize at least some immunity from some official acts in some circumstances), it could be spun as a Trump win or loss.

Chief Justice Roberts likely would not want the Court injected so much into the Presidential debate. That suggests nothing before Friday at the earliest.

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