[EL] ELB News and Commentary 5/5/15

Rick Hasen rhasen at law.uci.edu
Tue May 5 07:35:20 PDT 2015


    "Parties Coming to More Agreement (Just Not on Who Deserves Credit)”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72247>

Posted onMay 5, 2015 7:32 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72247>byRick 
Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Carl Hulse 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/us/politics/parties-are-agreeing-more-just-not-on-the-reason.html?ref=politics&_r=0>NYT 
analysis.

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Posted inlegislation and legislatures 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=27>,political parties 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=25>,political polarization 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=68>


    “Rep.: Harris Co. officials derail online voter sign-up”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72245>

Posted onMay 5, 2015 7:30 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72245>byRick 
Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

News 
<http://www.kvia.com/news/rep-harris-co-officials-derail-online-voter-signup/32806642>from 
Texas.

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Posted inelection administration 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18>,voter registration 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=37>,voting technology 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>


    More SCOTUSBlog Entries on Williams-Yulee
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72241>

Posted onMay 5, 2015 7:24 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72241>byRick 
Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Robert Durham 
<http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/05/symposium-yes-it-can-hurt-just-to-ask/>,Robert 
Corn-Revere 
<http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/05/symposium-for-judges-only/>, 
andJoshua Wheeler 
<http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/05/symposium-seem-familiar-and-other-random-musings-on-williams-yulee/>.

MORE 
<http://concurringopinions.com/archives/2015/05/fan-58-1-first-amendment-news-alan-morrison-williams-yulee-the-ruling-with-no-real-world-impact.html>from 
Alan Morrison at Concurring Opinions.

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,judicial 
elections <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=19>,Supreme Court 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


    “Paralysis At The Federal Election Commission And What Can Be Done
    About It” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72239>

Posted onMay 5, 2015 7:20 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72239>byRick 
Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Diane Rehm show. 
<http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-05-05/partisan-paralysis-at-the-federal-election-commission-and-what-can-be-done-about-it>

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,federal 
election commission <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>


    “State’s Congressional Districts Rest on Jurisdictional Dispute”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72236>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 2:42 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72236>byRick 
Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Marcia Coyle 
<http://www.nationallawjournal.com/supremecourtbrief/home/id=1202725426940?kw=State%27s%20Congressional%20Districts%20Rest%20on%20Jurisdictional%20Dispute&et=editorial&bu=National%20Law%20Journal&cn=20150504&src=EMC-Email&pt=Supreme%20Court%20Brief%20Headlines&slreturn=20150404173432>:

    In the Three-Judge Court Act, Congress required district court
    panels of three jurists to decide litigation involving
    redistricting, campaign finance and other key areas.

    Three Marylanders now are asking the U.S. Supreme Court the
    fundamental question of when a case must actually be heard by those
    special courts. The justices will take their first look at the
    petition in/Shapiro v. Mack/during their May 21 conference.

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Posted inredistricting <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>,Supreme Court 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


    Controversial and Now Bankrupt Corinthian College Funded Crossroads
    GPS <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72234>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 12:59 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72234>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Interesting. 
<https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/04/bankruptcy-filing-shows-corinthian-colleges-secretly-funded-d-c-think-tanks-dark-money-election-efforts/>

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,tax law 
and election law <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=22>


    “Get ready for a lot more ‘dark money’ in politics”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72232>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 12:58 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72232>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Greg Sargent writes. 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/04/get-ready-for-a-lot-more-dark-money-in-politics/>

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,campaigns 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>


    In Defense of Justice Scalia <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72230>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 11:55 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72230>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I’m going to disagree with Jeff Toobin on this one 
<http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/on-gay-marriage-its-not-scalias-court>. 
The comment on the protester seems pretty innocuous to me.  I take it 
that Scalia was joking that it was “refreshing” to have a right wing 
person disrupting the Court rather than the left-wing campaign finance 
protestors who have repeatedly been in Court recently.

I have no doubt where Justice Scalia will fall in the same sex marriage 
cases, and it is a place with which I will strongly disagree.  But I 
would not see a broader cultural or political statement in Justice 
Scalia’s refreshing comment. He’s the Supreme Court’s class clown who 
just can’t help himself with the wise crack at oral argument.

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Posted inSupreme Court <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


    Wisconsin “John Doe” Case Relisted for May 14 #SCOTUS Conference
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72228>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 11:20 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72228>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Docket 
<http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/14-872.htm>. 
Here ismy earlier pos <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72166>t on what the 
relisting means.

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,chicanery 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>,Supreme Court 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


    Floyd Abrams Speech on First Amendment Makes Important Point About
    Corporations <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72226>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 10:43 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72226>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I had the great pleasure of speaking at a Yale conference this week on 
my money and politics work, at a conference co-sponsored by the Abrams 
Institute. That’s the work of Floyd Abrams, the nation’s leading First 
Amendment lawyer.  We had a very interesting exchange when I presented 
two chapters ofPlutocrats United 
<http://www.amazon.com/Plutocrats-United-Campaign-Distortion-Elections/dp/0300212453>, 
including one of the chapters that criticizes Floyd’s views of Citizens 
United in particular. Floyd was beyond gracious, and offered helpful and 
constructive comments on the work.  He also pointed me to arecent speech 
<http://concurringopinions.com/archives/2015/03/guest-contributor-floyd-abrams-liberty-is-liberty.html>he 
gave, “Liberty is Liberty,” and this part about the Fist Amendment 
rights of corporations.  Here’s the key part:

    So let me personalize this is a bit. It is true that when I think of
    clients that I or my Firm have represented in First Amendment cases,
    I think immediately of some individuals –Judith Miller
    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller>for one, and more
    recently,/New York Times/journalistJames Risen
    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen>, who my Firm represented
    on a/pro bono/basis.

    But I also think of corporations. Not just enormous media
    corporations but ones like Barnes & Noble, that I represented some
    years ago with respect to asubpoena
    <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/source040298.htm>issued
    by the Office of Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr in an effort to
    learn what book Monica Lewinsky had purchased as a gift for
    President Clinton. And of the Brooklyn Museum, which then New York
    City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani fought toclose down
    <http://partners.nytimes.com/library/arts/092399brooklyn-museum-funds.html> because
    he disapproved of some of its art. And of a motion picture company
    that sought advice from us as to whether a scene in a much honored
    film it had made which contained a scene, filmed abroad,  showing
    the 17 year old star of the film sexually entangled with an older
    female star could be said to have violated American child
    pornography laws. And of a number of liberal arts colleges around
    the country that weighed in in the Supreme Court, in briefs we wrote
    for them, on the First Amendment impact on educational institutions
    if affirmative action was ruled unconstitutional. And of a tobacco
    company Irepresented
    <http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/big-tobacco-gets-top-first-amendment-lawyer-new-suit-134200>in
    a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration seeking to require
    them to place on 50% of each of their packs grotesque pictures of
    dead or dying people who had smoked. And I think of the fact that
    until last month, when a case I had been actively involved in
    settled, I devoted a great deal of my timerepresenting
    <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19floyd.html?pagewanted=all>a
    credit rating agency and arguing that when the Department of Justice
    commenced a civil action against it and only it  arising out of
    ratings all but identical with those of other rating agencies and my
    client was the only one that had downgraded the debt of the United
    States, that the Government had violated the First Amendment because
    it is not permitted under the First Amendment to retaliate against
    its critics by using the law in a selective fashion.

    You may agree or disagree with the positions we took or the clients
    for whom we took them. But one thing is common to all of the
    examples I have just cited to you. No one in any of these matters —
    not any opponent, not any judge, no one — said anything to the
    effect that since our client was a corporation that it had no First
    Amendment rights and should not be heard to say that those rights
    had been violated. I do not exaggerate when I say that if anyone had
    said that in court, he or she would have been laughed out of it.

    Yet much of the debate about the/Citizens United/case sounds as
    if it was shocking for the Supreme Court to have held that
    corporations receive First Amendment protection at all. The opinion
    for the Court, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, cited 25 cases,
    including ones involving for-profit non-media corporations, in which
    First Amendment protection had been afforded to corporations. Even
    Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissenting opinion said that “[w]e have
    long since held that corporations are covered by the First
    Amendment.” Yet listen to a different part of Justice Stevens’
    opinion in which he states that “corporations have no consciences,
    no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires” – as if that wiped
    out all those First Amendment cases.  Or to Senator Elizabeth
    Warren,instructing
    <http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1142915/47879134#c60>us that
    “corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids,
    they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they
    love and they die.” All true and yet all unresponsive to why the
    First Amendment, as it has so often been held to do, should not be
    held to protect the speech of corporations as well as “real” people.
    Or of New York University Law Professor Burt Neuborne writing that
    unlike corporations, human beings “die, do not enjoy economic
    advantages like limited liability, and, most important, have a
    conscience that sometimes transcends crude economic self-interest.”
    These differences, Professor Neuborneargued
    <http://slinkingtowardretirement.com/?p=20421>, “raise a threshold
    question . . . about whether corporations are even in the First
    Amendment ballpark.”

Read the whole thing.

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,Supreme 
Court <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


    “Citizens United: The view from the ivory tower has a blind spot”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72224>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 10:33 am 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72224>byRick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Jeff Clements 
<http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/240837-citizens-united-the-view-from-the-ivory-tower-has-a-blind>at 
The Hill’s Congress Blog takes me and others on.

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Posted incampaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>,Supreme 
Court <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>


    “Billionaire: Buying Elections Is Charity”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72222>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 9:56 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72222>byRick 
Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Daily Beast 
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/30/billionaire-buying-elections-is-charity.html>on 
Tom Steyer, updated with a statement from Steyer.

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Posted inUncategorized <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


    “The members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court are so divided they
    can’t agree who their chief justice is.”
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72220>

Posted onMay 4, 2015 9:50 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72220>byRick 
Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Great lede 
<http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/wisconsin-supreme-court-divided-over-chief-justice-b99493638z1-302435651.html>in 
this Patrick Marley piece.

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Posted inchicanery <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>,judicial 
elections <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=19>

-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
hhttp://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org

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