[EL] Justice Stevens new book, Six Amendments

[Marc Greidinger]

While I have my disagreements with Mr. Justice Stevens' chosen six, I am
afraid that I have more issues with yours', both by volume and proportion,
and with respect to election law issues. But there is hope for mankind: we
do agree on some things at least.

One area I am glad to see both you and the Justice address (albeit in
different ways -- I like Stevens' approach better) is sovereign immunity.

For similar reasons, IMHO, 11th amendment immunity also needs to be
addressed. Perhaps more urgently in fact, because the 11th Amendment
interferes with claims for injunctive relief as well as damages, and unlike
state sovereign immunity, there is not a patchwork of state statutes
waiving 11th Amendment immunity.

Here is an election law example: parts of the Voting Rights Act have been
interpreted by some courts to demand a 3 Judge panel in federal court. On
the other hand, state laws governing voting procedure can often only be
enforced in state court: under Pennhurst, the 11th Amendment says that you
cannot enforce a state law right against a state governmental entity in
federal court, even for injunctive relief.

State rights and federal rights voting procedural rights frequently
diverge, and create different baselines. But there is essentially no forum
in which a citizen with issues arising under both state and federal law can
get these issues comprehensively addressed. That seems irrational no matter
whether you are looking at this from a citizen or governmental perspective.


On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 7:17 PM, Jon Roland <jon.roland at constitution.org>wrote:

>  This demonstrates that even one whose job was to decide constitutional
> cases does not thereby acquire the knowledge and skills needed to
> competently draft amendments to the U.S. Constitution. I estimate there are
> probably less than 200 such persons alive, and none of them are on the
> federal bench.
>
> Drafting competent constitutional amendments is awesomely difficult. My
> attempt to do so is at http://constitution.org/reform/us/con_amend.htmand I am still making revisions from from comments. I have not seen better
> ones from people one might expect should be able to do this kind of thing.
>
> On 04/21/2014 10:20 AM, Rick Hasen wrote:
>
> Justice Stevens new book, *Six **Amendments*<http://www.amazon.com/Six-Amendments-Should-Change-Constitution-ebook/dp/B00GM0P55M/>
>
>
>
> --
>
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