Rethinking Presidential Eligibility

Many aspiring American Presidents have had their candidacies challenged for failing to meet the Constitution’s eligibility requirements. Although none of these challenges have ever been successful, they have sapped campaigns of valuable resources and posed a threat to several ambitious men. This Article examines several notable presidential eligibility challenges and explains why they have often been unsuccessful. The literature on presidential eligibility traditionally has focused on the Eligibility Clause, which enumerates the age, residency, and citizenship requirements that a President must satisfy before taking office. By contrast, very little of it examines how a challenge to one’s candidacy impacts a presidential campaign. This Article seeks to fill this gap. It also offers a modest proposal: Congress should pass legislation defining exactly who is eligible to be President and also implement procedural rules that would expedite presidential eligibility cases for review to the Supreme Court

Our Campaign Finance Nationalism

Campaign finance is the one area of election law that is most difficult to square with federalism. While voting has a strong federalism component—elections are run by the states and our elected officials represent concrete geographical districts—our campaign finance system, which is rooted in the First Amendment, almost entirely sidesteps the boundaries of American federalism. In so doing, our campaign finance system creates a tenuous connection between a lawmaker’s constituents, or the people who elect him, and the contributors who provide the majority of his campaign cash. The recent explosion of outside spending in American elections by wealthy individuals and Super PACs has further eroded the relationship between campaign finance and election law federalism. Indeed, today the restrictions placed on campaign finance are not federal at all, but rather national: only foreign nationals cannot make contributions or expenditures to influence federal, state, or local elections in the United States. However, these restrictions barring foreign nationals from participating in our elections suffer from several doctrinal inconsistencies, and, as the 2016 election showed, they are also hard to police in practice. This Article explores the relationship between our election law federalism and our campaign finance nationalism. It explains the difficulties that the states and the federal government have encountered when they have tried to regulate campaign finance at the border by restricting how outside money is spent to influence our elections

Campaign Finance and the Ecology of Democratic Speech

Biologists have contributed to our understanding of the world\u27s ecosystems, explaining how the natural world is populated by different species, which are able to thrive and blossom because of the existence of other species in the rightproportion. In similar fashion, the authors of this article believe that the political world has an ecosystem. It is an ecosystem where free speech may thrive or wither, and its fate rests on the delicate balance of political influence between citizens and corporations. This balance is disturbed when concentrations of wealth funnel into the democratic process through campaign spending. The Supreme Court, through its decisions in several recent campaign finance cases, has impermissiblyaltered ourpoliticalecosystem in favor of corporatespeech in ways that now threaten free speech. This state of affairs, the authors argue, is antithetical to the history of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and holds grave consequences for our democracy\u27s future

The Origins of Semi-Presidentialism in Post-Communist Europe : Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova in Comparative Perspective

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

The Best Candidate Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times

The way American citizens elect a president in November is enshrined in the Constitution and has remained unchanged for two hundred years. By contrast, the rules by which American political parties nominate their presidential candidates have evolved dramatically over time. In recent years, these byzantine rules have allowed a number of unexpected candidates to win their party\u27s presidential nomination. In The Best Candidate, a roster of leading election law scholars from across the political spectrum - true-blue Democrats, die-hard Republicans, and everyone in between - illuminate the law behind the modern presidential nomination process and offer ideas for how it can be improved. This book offers a blueprint for how American voters and their parties could nominate the best candidate for the presidency, and it should be read by anyone who cares about the occupant of the Oval Office

Election Law Stories

This title offers a rich and detailed account of the most significant cases in election law, including the landmark decisions of Reynolds v. Sims, Bush v. Gore, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and Shelby County v. Holder. The book relies on a unique encapsulated approach to storytelling, as each of its authors surveys an important doctrinal area in the field through the telling of his or her story. The volume’s thirteen cases concern the right to vote, redistricting and gerrymandering, campaign finance, and election administration. The book is suited for courses in the law of democracy at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Chapter: The History of Voter ID Laws and the Story of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (Joshua A. Douglas)https://uknowledge.uky.edu/lawfac_book/1039/thumbnail.jp

Regulating Corruption

Authors: Eugene Mazo, Wake Forest University School of Law Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Stetson University College of Law Moderator: Peter Overby, NPR Power, Money & Influence Correspondent Commentator: Jason A. Abel, Steptoe & Johnson LL