| Subject: news of the day 11/6/03 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 11/6/2003, 7:27 AM |
| To: election-law |
Today is exactly two months since the September 6 Supreme Court oral argument in the McCain-Feingold BCRA case. Back then, I predicted that the most likely time for the Court to issue its decision and opinions would be mid-October through November. We are now in the midst of that period. I understand that the Court when it is in session usually issues opinions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The winter break starts December 15, and I very much expect an opinion by then, because that will be around the time that the issue advocacy provisions of the law will kick in by virtue of the first primaries and caucuses. But the Court has no official deadline by which it must decide the case.
Of course, I'll have complete coverage whenever the opinion issues.
This conference will take place November 14th in Gewirz Hall, 120 F Street (corner of 2nd and F Street N.W.), Washington D.C. from 1:00 to 5:30pm
This conference is sponsored by Johnny Barnes, Executive Director of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the ACLU, Robert Bauer, Chair of the Political Law Group at Perkins Coie LLP, and Roy Schotland, Professor, Georgetown Law Center.
Panelists will include:
Panel 1.
What has changed? Revisiting the DOJ/FEC Relationship
* Craig Donsanto, Director, Election Crimes Branch, DOJ
* Noel Hillman, Chief, Public Integrity Section of DOJ
* Larry Norton, General Counsel, Federal Election Commission
* Roy Schotland, Professor, Georgetown Law Center
* Ellen Weintraub, Chair, Federal Election Commission
Panel 2.
Taking a Backseat? Impact Of Enhanced Criminal Penalties on Civil
Enforcement
* Jan Baran, Partner, Wiley Rein & Fielding
* Robert Bauer, Partner, Perkins Coie
* Craig Donsanto, Director, Election Crimes Branch DOJ
* Larry Norton, General Counsel, Federal Election Commission
* Michael Toner, Commissioner, Federal Election Commission
Panel 3.
Prosecuting Politicians or Political Prosecutions? The Criminal Bar's
Perspective
* Monika Bickert, Trial Attorney, Public Integrity Section, DOJ
* Stan Brand, Partner, Brand & Frulla
* Marc Elias, Partner, Perkins Coie
* Michael Horowitz, Partner, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, member
of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, formerly Chief of Staff, Criminal
Division, DOJ
* Eric Yaffe, Partner, Schmeltzer, Aptaker & Shepard, formerly
Deputy Chief of Campaign Financing Task Force, DOJ
Panel 4.
Don't Worry Be Happy? A Civil Liberties View
* Spencer Overton, Professor, National Law Center, George
Washington University
* Karl Sandstrom, Of Counsel, Perkins Coie, former FEC Commissioner
* Fredrick A.O. Schwarz, Brennan Center, NYU School of Law
To RSVP
Please e-mail to Marcia Scott or phone: 202.654.1752
(Anyone attending that conference might also try to attend the Symposium on
North American Election Law taking place the next day in D.C.)
NJ.com offers this
article
on whether a Northampton City Council member may be punished for
failing to disclose his election committee's names on campaign mailers.
The local prosecutor suggests that the disclosure requirement is
unconstitutional. In fact, that is probably a misreading of the
applicable Supreme Court precedent, which appears to bar disclosure of
the identity of someone making a face-to-face solicitation or spending
small sums on campaign speech but allow states to require disclosure in
mass mailings, particularly those sent by candidates. More information
in Chapter 21 ("Campaign Finance Dislcosure") in the Lowenstein &
Hasen election law casebook.
The New York Times offers this
report on the presidential public financing system. See also this
Washington Post report and this Roll
Call report (paid registration required).
Though the book has been available for a few weeks, NYU Press officially released my book, The Supreme Court and Election Law: Judging Equality from Baker v. Carr to Bush v. Gore, this week. They also have posted the Introduction and Table of Contents. Amazon has the book here and Barnes and Noble has the book, at a 20% discount, here. You can also see a copy of the book's cover now on the right side of the blog.
Here is the description from the book's jacket:
Hasen, drawing on the case files of Supreme Court Justices in the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist courts, roots the Supreme Court's intervention in political process cases to the 1962 case Baker v. Carr, in which the Court first agreed to consider claims that a state legislature had violated the Constitution by failing to draw legislative districts with equal populations. The case opened the courts to a variety of election law disputes, to the point that the courts now control and direct major aspects of the American electoral process.
The Supreme Court does have a crucial role to play in protecting a socially constructed "core" of political equality principles, concludes Hasen, but it should leave contested questions of political equality to the political process itself. Under this standard, many of the Court's most important election law cases from Baker to Bush have been wrongly decided.
-- Rick Hasen Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow Loyola Law School 919 South Albany Street Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211 (213)736-1466 (213)380-3769 - fax rick.hasen@lls.edu http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html http://electionlawblog.org