| Subject: news of the day 7/6/05 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 7/6/2005, 6:50 AM |
| To: election-law |
The L.A. Times offers Initiative
is Under Review; Version of redistricting measure on petitions was
different from the officially approved one. I recall looking at
this case law in California a few years ago, and I think that these
minor discrepancies could cause real problems for the proponents of the
initiative.
The New York Times offers this
editorial on the Pence-Wynn campaign finance bill. Bob Bauer reacts.
See here. A taste: "As has been widely noted over the last few days, Justice O'Connor's approach to deciding cases was characterized by razor-thin rulings that turned on the specific facts at hand. While this pragmatic, incremental approach may serve the nation well in other areas of law (notably abortion and affirmative action), it is quite problematic in the area of election law. In this field particularly, it is important that the outcome of a case be perceived as unaffected by which political party benefits from the outcome, and that appearance of impartiality is difficult to achieve when the outcome is so heavily fact-dependent."
-- Rick Hasen William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law Loyola Law School 919 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