Democracy and Law
This Note seeks to show that the state has an interest not only in preventing voting fraud, but also in preventing the appearance of voting fraud. Drawing an analogy to campaign finance law, this Note argues that if the state has an interest in preventing the appearance of corruption in election more
How, and how much, does the Constitution protect against political entrenchment?
Judicial ineptitude in dealing with this question—on display in the modern Court’s
treatment of partisan gerrymandering—has its roots in Luther v. Borden. One hundred
and more
In this Note I argue that the Federal Election Campaign Act’s $5000 limitation on
individual contributions to political committees should be removed. I advance two
main arguments. First, in light of recent campaign finance decisions, the limitation
appears to be more
Contested elections in which the number of illegal votes exceeds the purported winner’s margin of victory present courts with difficult choices. Simply certifying the result risks denying the true winner his victory, while ordering a new election leaves the choice to a changed electorate. more
Do campaign contributions affect judicial decisions by elected judges in favor of their contributors’ interests? Although the Supreme Court’s recent decision in
Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. relies on this intuition for its logic, that intuition has more
The world in which we live, a world in which law pervades the practice of democratic politics—from advance regulation of public assemblies to detailed rules governing
elections—is the product of a particular period of American history. Between 1880 and 1930, states more
Since the presidential election of 2000, a host of new claims has arisen alleging unlawful denial of the right to vote. Litigants have challenged the use of error-prone voting machines, misleading registration forms, and the highly controversial photo identification requirements for in-person more
In the United States’ early history, state legislatures often formally instructed their federal representatives on particular votes. This practice flourished for a century but then died out—a change that many scholars attribute to the Seventeenth Amendment. This Note argues that more
This Note argues against the use of the prudential political question doctrine (PPQD), as exemplified by the Vieth v. Jubelirer plurality opinion. In Vieth, the Supreme Court avoided formulating a standard for adjudicating the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering due to more
Federal judges are expected to conduct themselves differently than their counterparts in the political branches. This Note considers the policy and historical reasons used to justify this different standard of conduct and concludes that these justifications are largely unsupported or overstated more