Partisan Gerrymandering: The Promise and Limits of State Court Judicial Review

In 2021, the Oregon Legislature succeeded in redrawing the state’s legislative and congressional districts, but the new redistricting plans were immediately challenged in state court as partisan gerrymanders. The Oregon Supreme Court rejected the challenge to the state legislative map, but its analysis, which accorded significant deference to the legislature’s choices, raised more questions than answers about the appropriate level of scrutiny for state redistricting plans. A special, five-judge court likewise rejected the gerrymandering challenge to the congressional map, and, while its analysis was less deferential, its decision also left unanswered the fundamental question regarding at what point a redistricting plan becomes an impermissible gerrymander. Both decisions, then, highlight the difficulty for state courts to police partisan gerrymandering. This Article concludes by examining some of the reasons for the Oregon courts’ deferential approach to reviewing redistricting plans and offers several recommendations for future reform – recommendations that apply equally to other states whose redistricting process and legal framework governing redistricting share similarities with Oregon’s

Why the National Popular Vote Compact is Unconstitutional

Unable to secure passage of a federal constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College, several opponents of the Electoral College have sought to establish the direct, popular election of the President via an interstate compact according to which individual signatory states agree to appoint their presidential electors in accordance with the nationwide popular vote. Ostensibly designed to prevent elections, such as the one in 2000, in which the Electoral College “misfired” and chose the candidate who received fewer popular votes, the National Popular Vote Compact has been adopted by several states, including California. In this Article, I argue that the National Popular Vote Compact violates the Presidential Elections Clause of Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Although the text of the Clause seems to give states unlimited power to select the manner in which each state’s presidential electors are chosen, a close reading of U.S. history suggests the need and propriety of limiting the scope of state authority under the Clause. Not only did the framers of the Constitution expressly reject the idea of a direct, popular election for President, but also not one state either in the wake of ratification or at any time thereafter has ever sought to appoint its presidential electors on the basis of votes cast outside the state, as the National Popular Vote Compact requires. In the same way that similar historical considerations led the U.S. Supreme Court to limit the scope of state authority with respect to federal legislative elections, this history regarding the Presidential Elections Clause likewise counsels in favor of a more limited understanding of state authority under Article II. As such, if opponents wish to abolish the Electoral College, the sole constitutionally proper mechanism for doing so is a federal constitutional amendment, not an interstate compact negotiated by a handful of states

Analysis of Clinical Trials and Review of Recent Advances in Therapy Decisions for Locally Advanced Prostate Cancer

Despite the implementation of screening and early detection in many countries, the prostate cancer mortality rate remains high, particularly when the cancer is locally advanced. Targeted therapies with high efficacy and minimal harms should be particularly beneficial in this group, and several new approaches show promise. This article briefly analyses relevant clinical studies listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, combined with a short literature review that considers new therapeutic approaches that can be investigated in future clinical trials. Therapies using gold nanoparticles are of special interest in low-resource settings as they can localize and enhance the cancer-cell killing potential of X-rays using equipment that is already widely available

Why the National Popular Vote Compact is Unconstitutional

Unable to secure passage of a federal constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College, several opponents of the Electoral College have sought to establish the direct, popular election of the President via an interstate compact according to which individual signatory states agree to appoint their presidential electors in accordance with the nationwide popular vote. Ostensibly designed to prevent elections, such as the one in 2000, in which the Electoral College “misfired” and chose the candidate who received fewer popular votes, the National Popular Vote Compact has been adopted by several states, including California. In this Article, I argue that the National Popular Vote Compact violates the Presidential Elections Clause of Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Although the text of the Clause seems to give states unlimited power to select the manner in which each state’s presidential electors are chosen, a close reading of U.S. history suggests the need and propriety of limiting the scope of state authority under the Clause. Not only did the framers of the Constitution expressly reject the idea of a direct, popular election for President, but also not one state either in the wake of ratification or at any time thereafter has ever sought to appoint its presidential electors on the basis of votes cast outside the state, as the National Popular Vote Compact requires. In the same way that similar historical considerations led the U.S. Supreme Court to limit the scope of state authority with respect to federal legislative elections, this history regarding the Presidential Elections Clause likewise counsels in favor of a more limited understanding of state authority under Article II. As such, if opponents wish to abolish the Electoral College, the sole constitutionally proper mechanism for doing so is a federal constitutional amendment, not an interstate compact negotiated by a handful of states

Clinical Trials and Therapeutic Approaches for Healthcare Challenges in Pakistan

Pakistan faces tremendous challenges in providing healthcare due to a lack of consistent policymaking, increasing expenditure and exponential growth in population since its inception in 1947. These challenges are not just driven by politics, policy and allocation of resources but also by healthcare, environment and characteristics of the population biology. Clinical trials provide the best way to find population-specific, cost-effective treatments that do not merely mimic those used in wealthier nations. This article analyzes all clinical studies conducted with at least one site in Pakistan listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, combined with a short overview that considers new therapeutic approaches that can be investigated in future clinical trials. Therapies using repurposed medicines are of particular interest as they use affordable drugs that are already widely available

The New Protectionism and the American Common Market

For nearly two centuries, the U.S. Constitution through the dormant Commerce Clause has protected the American common market from protectionist commercial stale regulations and taxes. During the past two terms, however, the U.S. Supreme Court created a new exception to the dormant Commerce Clause for protectionist state and local taxes and regulations that favor public rather than private entities. In this Article, we describe this “New Protectionism” and argue that the Court\u27s embrace of it is profoundly misguided. As we document, there is no material difference, economically or constitutionally, between public protectionism and private protectionism. As illustrated by the variety of ways in which government and private enterprise interact, there is no coherent distinction between public and private activities, and ensuing efforts to draw such a line will only serve to embroil the courts in tasks for which it is ill suited. Worse, this new exception only encourages stale and focal governments to engage in protectionism in a variety of contexts, such as education and local economic development, in which the dangers to national economic union are paramount. Coupled with the Court\u27s recently declared unwillingness to subject nondiscriminatory regulations and loses to minimal judicial scrutiny, this endorsement of public protectionism threatens to emasculate the constitutional protections for the American common market and should therefore be rethought by the Court or legislatively superseded by Congress. Reprinted by permission of the publisher