"New York Takes Step on Money in Judicial Elections"

Big news from NY: "New York's top court officials will bar the state's hundreds of elected judges from hearing cases involving lawyers and others who make significant contributions to their campaigns, a move that will change the political culture of courts and transform judicial elections by removing an important incentive lawyers have for contributing"

MALDEF's Thomas Saenz to the CA Supreme Court?

Could be.

Jim Maule on the Tax Consequences of Congressional Sleepovers

Here, at TaxProf.

"The Earmarks Paradox"

Eliza's latest.

Brunner, Kobach, and Ritchie at WM Forum on Secretaries of State Tomorrow

This looks very interesting.

"Looking for a Few Good Philosopher Kings: Political Gerrymandering as a Question of Institutional Competence"

Luis Fuente-Rohwer has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Connecticut Law Review). Here is the abstract:

The redistricting season is about to begin in full swing, and with it will come renewed calls for the federal courts, and particularly the U. S. Supreme Court, to aggressively review the work of the political branches. This is an intriguing puzzle. Since the early 1960's, the federal courts have regulated questions of politics aggressively. They have done this even in the face of difficult questions of political representation. The courts have taken sides, to be sure, but these can only be described as acts of volition and will, not constitutional law. The leading case is Reynolds v. Sims. This is when the Supreme Court ultimately divorced these political questions from the constitutional text. Moving forward, Reynolds informs all subsequent case law within the Law of Democracy. If the Court can decide Reynolds as it does, it can decide anything. But this is not true for political gerrymandering questions. What explains this hesitation on the part of the justices? This Essay answers this important question. Understanding the justices as strategic actors, this Essay conjectures that the Court removes itself as an institutional player in the gerrymandering debate because the redistricting process left alone tilts to conservative policies and outcomes. More generally, this Essay argues that scholarly calls for judicial intervention demand the existence of philosopher kings to choose amongst myriad theories of representation. These are calls, in effect, for an activist judicial

"The New Phone Book's Here! The New Phone Book's Here!"

I was reminded of that line from The Jerk when I became excited about the following news passed on by Joel Gora: The United States Code, as part of a reorganization, will have a new title 51 on "Voting and Elections." The new title 51 says it will incorporate the campaign finance rules of Title 2 and the VRA rules of Title 42.

"Birther Debate Alive Across U.S."

Politico offers this report.

"Voting rights activist now ready to finally finish book"

The Montgomery Advertiser offers this report.

More on the Texas House Election Contest

Following up on this post, see this report [corrected link] of the Special Master (more documents here). It looks like this case raises questions about whether votes should be disqualified for election worker error (like the 6th Circuit case) and reliance on the Democracy Canon. Dig in!

Amen

Noah Feldman on why we should not want the Justices to recuse themselves at the drop of a hat, My brief blog comments on this point here.