The Supreme Court And Election Law

View the Table of Contents . Read the Introduction . ocirc;A must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of law and politics. . . . [Hasen's] is an important framework against which election law scholars will react and upon which they will build for some time to come.ouml; --Michigan Law Review "Hasen wrote this concise but substantive volume to assess the history, at least since 1901, of the Supreme Court's intervention in the political process." --The Law and Politics Book Review "A major contribution to the field of election law." --Thomas E. Mann, The Brookings Institution In the first comprehensive study of election law since the Supreme Court decidedBush v. Gore, Richard L. Hasen rethinks the Court's role in regulating elections. Drawing on the case files of the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist courts, Hasen roots the Court's intervention in political process cases to the landmark 1962 case, Baker v. Carr. The case opened the courts to a variety of election law disputes, to the point that the courts now control and direct major aspects of the American electoral process. The Supreme Court does have a crucial role to play in protecting a socially constructed "core" of political equality principles, contends Hasen, but it should leave contested questions of political equality to the political process itself. Under this standard, many of the Court's most important election law cases from Baker to Bush have been wrongly decided.