"GOP attorneys fight to get DeLay off ballot in federal appeals court"

AP offers this report. See also here quoting the Republicans' attorney Jim Bopp as saying that an appeal to the en banc court or the Supreme Court is possible if, as it appears from the reports of oral argument, Republicans lose before the 5th Circuit panel. The article quotes Bopp as saying "we're not going to let the Democrats steal this seat." My earlier analysis is here.

Two from Adam Cox

Adam Cox has posted The Temporal Dimension of Voting Rights (forthcoming Virginia Law Review) and Redesigning Redistricting Institutions. Here are the abstracts.
Temporal:

Modern voting rights scholarship agrees on one thing: voting rights are in large part aggregate rights. Accordingly, one cannot evaluate voting rights claims, or the fairness of the electoral system, without establishing the boundaries of appropriate aggregation. This framework has led the literature to focus on spatial aggregation. That is, commentators concentrate on when it is appropriate to aggregate across persons located in different places to determine the fairness (or constitutionality) of a voting rule. Almost entirely overlooked, however, is the possibility of temporal aggregation. To evaluate the fairness of a voting rule, one must also pick a time period across which to aggregate the collective treatment of individual voters. This Article explores the temporal dimension of voting rights, showing that temporal aggregation issues play a central but unexamined role in many voting rights disputes, including the partisan gerrymandering case just decided by the Supreme Court. In addition, the Article highlights the importance of temporal aggregation for a number of concrete disputes in voting rights theory and doctrine. Understanding the temporal dimension of voting rights expands the available strategies for incorporating minority voices into legislative assemblies, provides a new perspective on the debates over partisan gerrymandering, and helps reconcile disagreements over the appropriate role of competition in the electoral process.

Redesigning:

Recent movements to reform redistricting in the United States have focused almost exclusively on the possibility of replacing state legislatures with nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions. The nearly exclusive focus on who draws districts overlooks at least two other ways to reform redistricting: by altering the decision rules that constrain legislatures when they redistrict; or by changing the institutional structures available to review legislatures' initial decisions. This Article sketches the broader suite of options and introduces a novel decision-rule
constraint - deferred redistricting implementation. The deferred implementation rule would leave legislatures with authority to craft redistricting plans after each census, but the rule would defer the implementation of those plans for a few election cycles. Deferred implementation creates a partial temporal veil of ignorance that would curtail egregious partisan gerrymanders. In addition, it would improve the incentives of legislators in charge of drawing district lines, making them less interested in using the redistricting process to pursue their political self interest.

-- 
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