Reforming the Contested Convention: Rethinking the Presidential Nomination Process

The presidential nomination process could be substantially improved through a few minor tweaks that would reduce unnecessary uncertainty, bolster its democratic underpinnings, and improve the connections among its various components. First, certain fundamental rules governing national conventions should be determined well in advance of the presidential nominating process, before any primaries or caucuses are held or delegates selected, and not be subject to change or suspension at the convention itself. Second, parties should enhance the democratic moorings of their national conventions by requiring presidential candidates to win a greater number of presidential preference votes to be placed into nomination. Third, state parties should tie the various components of the presidential nomination process more closely together by adopting a blend of the Democratic and Republican Parties’ current approaches. When a candidate is allotted national convention delegates based on the results of a presidential preference vote, the candidate should have a voice in selecting those delegates, and those delegates in turn should be bound to vote for that candidate, at least during the first round of voting at the national convention

Eigenvalues of the Laplacian of a graph

Let G be a finite undirected graph with no loops or multiple edges. The Laplacian matrix of G, Delta(G), is defined by Delta sub ii = degree of vertex i and Delta sub ij = -1 if there is an edge between vertex i and vertex j. The structure of the graph G is related to the eigenvalues of Delta(G); in particular, it is proved that all the eigenvalues of Delta(G) are nonnegative, less than or equal to the number of vertices, and less than or equal to twice the maximum vertex degree. Precise conditions for equality are given

Public Law at the Cathedral: Enjoining the Government

Conventional wisdom provides that injunctive relief in public law cases is generally unnecessary, because a declaratory judgment and the threat of damages are enough to induce the government to comply with a court’s ruling (except, perhaps, in the institutional reform context). Consistent with this prevailing understanding, most scholars to apply Calabresi and Melamed’s Cathedral framework to public law have concluded that nearly all constitutional rights are protected by property rules, regardless of whether a rightholder actually is protected by an injunction, or instead merely has a substantial likelihood of obtaining one if she goes to court. This Article challenges this prevailing understanding, including past attempts to apply the Cathedral framework to constitutional rights. It argues that a constitutional or statutory right receives the greatest available level of protection when it is secured by an injunction. A court’s decision about whether to issue an injunction is likely to make the biggest difference in protecting a public law entitlement where: (i) high transaction costs otherwise may deter or prevent rightholders from enforcing their rights (such as where administrative exhaustion requirements exist or the threatened violation is “fast moving”); or (ii) the benefits of violating the right will accrue primarily to politically influential people or groups, while violations are inflicted primarily on members of unorganized or politically weak groups. Because of the importance of injunctions in public law cases, procedural, jurisdictional, and other related rules should be reformed to reduce the unique obstacles that hinder plaintiffs in such cases from obtaining injunctive relief, and make injunctions available on a wider, more consistent, and substantively defensible basis. Moreover, the Cathedral framework should be modified as it applies to public law cases, to more accurately reflect the important distinction between actually being protected by an injunction (“complete property-rule” protection), and merely having a substantial likelihood of being able to obtain one (“potential property-rule” protection)

Litigating Imperfect Solutions: State Constitutional Claims in Federal Court

1 online resource (PDF, page 401-430)Book review: 51 imperfect solutions: states and the making of American constitutional law. Jeffrey S. Sutton. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xi, 278. Reviewed by Michael T. Morle

The Independent State Legislature Doctrine

The U.S. Constitution grants authority to both regulate congressional elections and determine the manner in which a state chooses its presidential electors specifically to the legislature of each state, rather than to the state as an entity. The independent state legislature doctrine teaches that, because a legislature derives its power over federal elections directly from the Constitution in this manner, that authority differs in certain important respects from the legislature’s general police powers that it exercises under the state constitution. Although the doctrine was applied on several occasions in the nineteenth century, it largely fell into desuetude in the years that followed. During the 2020 presidential election cycle, however, several Justices issued opinions demonstrating an interest in recognizing and enforcing the doctrine. This Article contends that the doctrine is best understood as a general principle that gives rise to a range of different potential corollaries, each of which is supported by somewhat differing lines of precedent, reasoning, historical practice, and prudential considerations. Each of these potential implications of the doctrine may be assessed separately from the others; the doctrine need not be accepted or repudiated wholesale. The fact that a court or commentator may accept or reject certain applications of the doctrine does not mean that other aspects, or the doctrine as a whole, must be similarly embraced or jettisoned. This Article unpacks the independent state legislature doctrine, exploring and offering a normative perspective on each of its possible corollaries

The Times and the revolutionary crisis of 1848

The thesis seeks to examine how The Times functioned within mid-nineteenth-century British society and to suggest how the newspaper can be used to read the history of the period from the perspective of the dominant elements within it. It begins by analysing the uses made of the newspaper by historians and questions the assumptions which lie behind them. Chapters 2 and 3 assess the dominant role of The Times within the newspaper press and explore the relationship between the newspaper and its readers and their mutual perceptions. Chapter 4 analyses the structure of contemporary society and the common values which lay within, while the following chapter indicates the extent to which The Times in its treatment of the French revolution of 1848 constructed its version of reality within those values and thereby defined and defended them. Chapter 6 completes the location of the newspaper by considering the extent to which it was independent of Government, yet dependent on individual politicians. The locating of The Times within contemporary society enables its treatment of the crisis of 1848 to be critically examined in chapters 7 and 8. This reveals the extent to which events in London and Ireland were associated together and perceived as parts of a revolutionary movement which encapsulated the basic fears of the possessing classes and threatened their vital interests. In defending those interests The Times was at its most potent and 1848 demonstrated the ability of the paper to orchestrate and direct opinion on specific issues. The role of The Times and its importance are evaluated by means of the perceptions contemporaries had of events, the way they reacted to them, and the judgements subsequently made by historians. The thesis emphasizes the importance of The Times both as an agent within society and a source for the study of it

Beyond the Elements: \u3ci\u3eErie\u3c/i\u3e and the Standards for Preliminary and Permanent Injuctions

Federal courts frequently avoid deciding whether federal or state law governs the availability of injunctive relief for state-law claims by simply declaring that both sets of standards are the same. Although federal and state standards for injunctions often incorporate similar elements, those elements often are phrased in somewhat different terms and relate to each other in different ways. Even when federal and state standards involve facially identical elements, federal and state courts often interpret and apply them differently based on completely distinct bodies of precedent that can lead to different outcomes. Because state and federal standards arise from, and refer to, distinct bodies of precedent that constitute different sets of guideposts for future rulings, federal courts should not treat them as fungible to avoid difficult Erie questions