Re: [EL] Electionlawblog news and commentary 4/5/11

Isn't Case Western a private university, and if so, where's the state
action?  If it's private, then the applicable principles are more akin
to New York State Bd of Elections v Lopez in which the associational
right basically trumps all, and selection rules or processes (for
convention-based "primaries") need not be fair, as the US Supreme
Court held in that case.  So why should internal competitions for dean
be "fair" - presuming we are going to analogize to election law
regardless of the apparent lack of state action?

The history of Case Western involves elements of secrecy like a
"secret trust". At one point in Case's history (before the merger)
they had 56 donors (sort of like the "top 50" someone mentioned in
this context) but at least on the website they only disclose one - the
biggest donor.  See: http://www.case.edu/stage/about/history.html
Two quotes to back up the above points, (which historical points are
mostly but not totally made in fun) are below:

quote:  "In 1877, Leonard Case, Jr., a philanthropic leading citizen
of Cleveland and early benefactor of the engineering school, began
laying the groundwork for the Case School of Applied Science. He
initiated a secret trust, whose valuable real estate yielded more than
$1 million, to endow a polytechnic school in Cleveland."
http://www.case.edu/stage/about/history.html

[...] "Funds for the land, however, had to be raised by the community.
 A committee for the two institutions had raised $119,400 from 56
donors by March 1881. Thirty-three thousand dollars came in the form
of a land purchase discount from Cordelia Ford and Liberty E. Holden,
whose 43-acre property formed the early campus. […] The joint land
purchase was just the first of many collaborations and partnerships
between Western Reserve University and the Case School of Applied
Science. [...]" http://www.case.edu/stage/about/history.html

Paul Lehto, J.D.

On 4/5/11, Bill Maurer <wmaurer@ij.org> wrote: