Professor Levitt's Testimony on Census Citizenship Question

On May 8, 2018 Loyola Law School, Los Angeles Dean for Research Justin Levitt testified before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding the 2020 census. An excerpt appears below:

In the current political climate, asking a question about citizenship status of every individual in the country is no mere request for information. Those who work in and with communities skeptical about the role of the federal executive branch fear that the question will prove explosive. Secretary Ross made the determination to ask this question despite his own admission that the career staff of “the Census Bureau and many stakeholders expressed concern [that doing so] would negatively impact the response rate,” and despite the absence of any opportunity to test that impact before implementing the change.

Read his full testimony below:

Why McCutcheon Is Bad News For Millionaires

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This op-ed originally appeared on Politico.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down a set of federal campaign finance limits. Some immediately bemoaned the ruling as another step toward plutocracy. But here’s a striking side effect: More than a few high rollers have not yet noticed that they just got bumped outside the velvet rope.

The final result in McCutcheon v. FEC was not the apocalyptic ruling some anticipated. Leading up to Wednesday’s opinion, there was no shortage of end-of-days soothsaying. Blame the court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which apparently recalibrated the rhetorical stakes for this type of case.

The court’s actual ruling undershot the hype. It left intact the same legal approach in place since the 1970s. The court used to look very skeptically at limits on independent spending (by organizations like super PACs), and left more regulatory latitude for limits on gifts directly to parties and candidates (and groups that donate directly to parties and candidates). It does still.

Read the complete op-ed.

A Broken Election System Becomes a Teenager

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This op-ed originally appeared on Pacific Standard.

Precisely 13 years ago, five Supreme Court justices cast the final and most important vote of the 2000 election, ending a Florida recount and effectively installing George W. Bush as the 43rd President of the United States.

Today, Bush v. Gore hits adolescence. We should be paying far more attention to this troubled teen.

The chaos of the winter of 2000 has slipped from the national consciousness. My students have no idea what a "hanging chad" is, or that such a thing was ever meaningful. More recent constitutional crises have left the combat in Tallahassee stale and distant. Much of America has, it seems, finally taken Justice Scalia's frequently quoted advice on the election: "Get over it."

But ignoring the Bush v. Gore bar mitzvah would be a grave mistake. In some ways, the need to remember--and to let that memory spur us to action--is greater now than ever before.

Read the complete piece.

Voter ID: The Diversity in the Details

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This op-ed originally appeared in Constitution Daily.

Voter ID laws are back in the news. Curiously, the most recent action concerns one of the oldest cases.

Judge Richard Posner wrote the 2007 appellate opinion upholding Indiana's strict photo ID law -- the first legal one in the country -- against a challenge. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the 2008 opinion for the Supreme Court upholding that upholding. Both have recently publicly mused about the merits of arguments by the judges that disagreed. That sort of reflective appreciation for the opposing view is sufficiently unusual that it has provoked a flood of commentary.

And that flood of commentary has largely lost sight of two very important distinctions. First,

ID laws are not all the same.

Every state makes sure, when people come to the polls, that they are who they say they are. It's the details of how they do this that matter. Some states compare signatures. Many see whether they can match up Social Security digits, or ask for a document like a utility bill or paycheck, off a long list. Some have a shorter list of approved documents. Some ask for a government-issued photo ID card from those who have one, and demand a special affidavit from those who do not.

And some now require specific photo ID cards from all but the legally indigent, preventing eligible voters who do not have photo ID on Election Day from casting a valid ballot at the polls. (Most such states have more lax documentary requirements for voting absentee.) Even within this category, there is variety: some accept student IDs, for example, and some do not.

Facile Turnout Stats on Voter ID: Wrong, the First Time

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This op-ed originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

Judge Richard Posner and Justice John Stevens wrote the 2007 Court of Appeals'majority opinion and 2008 Supreme Court plurality opinion, respectively, upholding Indiana's strict photo ID law against challenge. Their recent public musings about the merits of the dissenting opinions in those cases are sufficiently unusual to have provoked a flood of commentary.

One of these commentaries stands out. Hans von Spakovsky, who has served as a local election official, at the FEC, and at the Department of Justice, joined the mix again last week. In a piece titled "Right the First Time," Mr. von Spakovsky defends Judge Posner's original opinion upholding the ID law.

His primary argument ridicules the notion that ID has stopped some voters from casting their ballots, by pointing to Indiana's consistent turnout gains since the law was implemented. Indiana's law was implemented in 2006. But turnout increased 2 percent from 2002 to 2006 (including in counties with large minority populations), increased 8 percent for Democrats and 5 percent for black voters from 2004 to 2008, increased (including for black voters) from 2006 to 2010, and increased again for black voters from 2008 to 2012. Therefore, he claims, Indiana's ID law can't possibly have hurt voters, particularly minorities.

I don't know if Mr. von Spakovsky will talk about Kansas: After Kansas implemented a strict ID law in 2012, black turnout dropped by 2 percent, and Latino turnout dropped by 21 percent.

Conclusions about the role of ID from either set of numbers are, of course, nothing but garbage. They should fail Statistics 101 at any school in the country.

Continue reading the remainder of this post on www.huffingtonpost.com.

Symposium: Aggregate Limits and the Fight over Frame

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

The following essay is part of a SCOTUSBlog online symposium on McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.

Photographs purport to show objective facts. But whether they illuminate or distort our understanding of the world depends entirely on choices -- of lens, of frame -- that the photographer has made. Much of constitutional law is the same: the choice of lens and frame drives the Supreme Court's understanding of our rights and obligations. Without recognizing this truth, it is virtually impossible to understand the Court's campaign finance jurisprudence.

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission offers a dizzying fight over lens and frame. The briefs presented to the Court zoom from micro to macro and back, often within sentences of the same brief. The basic structure of the reason for the fight, at least, is clear. McCutcheon is about aggregate caps on contributions to federal candidates, party committees, and PACs that donate to candidates and parties. There are limits on what I can give to any individual federal candidate. And then there are limits on what I can give to all federal candidates, total. The same is true for parties and PACs. This case is about the totals.

From the flattest perspective, this case has already been decided. This case challenges aggregate limits. Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the progenitor of the modern campaign finance regime, upheld a system of aggregate limits. Easy. How to view aggregate limits
Much too easy. Buckley's 294 pages cover the entirety of the landmark Federal Election Campaign Act. It gave aggregate limits six sentences. Two of the six were devoted to describing the limits. One noted that the issue had "not been separately addressed at length by the parties." Three more disposed of the substance. This Court is unlikely to believe that its focus is confined by those three sentences. (Similarly, granting cert. to revisit these three sentences provides little reason to believe that the Court is interested in revisiting Buckley entirely.)
Another shallow lens simply looks to conventional wisdom, and the caricature of a relentlessly deregulatory Court. Citizens United looms, larger than life. Like Citizens United, the legislation challenged in McCutcheon also constrains campaign-related cash. And like Citizens United, the challenge has been brought in part by James Bopp, who has a remarkable record before the Court. Easy.

Of contributions and expenditures and the land in between

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This commentary was cross-posted to the Election Law Blog.

In the world of campaign finance, the constitutional distinction between contributions and expenditures has been one of the primary, comparatively stable, fault lines.  This has been true since at least since Buckley v. Valeo, the progenitor (and for some, original sin) of the modern campaign finance regime.  The Court has relatively consistently reviewed limits on most expenditures with greater scrutiny than limits on contributions. 

In the Supreme Court’s latest foray into campaign finance, the McCutcheon v. FEC case to be argued this fall, plaintiffs are arguing that the regulations in question blur the categories.  Those regulations impose aggregate limits on donations to federal candidates, parties, and PACs that give to candidates.  I may give no more than $5,200 to any individual federal candidate over a two-year campaign cycle.  In that same period, I may give no more than $48,600 to federal candidates, total.  McCutcheon is about the latter, total, limits.

The McCutcheon plaintiffs have argued that these aggregate limits are something of a hybrid, and ultimately more like expenditures than contributions.  Bob Bauer, here, also finds the distinction blurry, noting that the rules restrict “the total amount that a contributor can spend on contributions.”

Shadowboxing and Unintended Consequences

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This commentary was cross-posted from SCOTUS blog.

The Court today struck down a statute that did not exist. And it did so at the request of jurisdictions seeking a little extra "dignity" -- who might end up with less dignity as a result.

Formally, the Court struck the 2006 reauthorization of 42 U.S.C. § 1973b -- Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, and a central part of the Act's preclearance regime. Its more famous counterpart, Section 5, requires certain jurisdictions to submit election changes for federal review, to ensure that they do not harm minority voting power. Section 5 sets the "what." Section 4 sets the "where," delineating which jurisdictions receive Section 5′s special medicine.

But the Section 4 that the Court struck is a curious creature -- as I'd feared, a simulacrum. The Court branded it the rote reenactment of a "formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day."

This stale formula is not the coverage formula actually in the law. The formula started with 1960s and 1970s registration and turnout figures, locating the broken democracies connected to the worst discrimination. But it did not end there. It allowed any jurisdiction that had demonstrated consistent improvement in minority opportunities, without backsliding, to "bail out" of coverage.

BREAKING NEWS: DOMA struck down, Prop 8 case dismissed on standing

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This information was cross-posted from Election Law Blog.

DOMA has been struck down as unconstitutional. Prop 8 case from California dismissed on standing grounds (initiative proponents have no cognizable injury distinct from the general population). I haven't yet read thoroughly, but SCOTUSblog reports that neither finds a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

DOMA decision is here; Prop 8 is here.

Both 5-4, very different majorities. DOMA is Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor; Prop 8 is Roberts, Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan.

Shelby County v. Holder Reaction Coverage

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

These posts originally appeared on the Election Law Blog

Reactions to Shelby County: Spencer Overton
I'll be expecting several comments today on Shelby County from academics who write in the field. Spencer Overton kicks it off:
The preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act required that all or part of 15 states submit their election changes to federal officials for approval. Today, five members of the Court ruled that the Section 4 coverage formula of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional and can no longer be used to require that areas preclear their election rules with federal officials. The Court invalidated the coverage formula because the Justices believed the formula was based on outdated election data from the 1960s and 1970s.
Today's Supreme Court decision is a setback for democracy.
Unfortunately, today's decision gives politicians even more power to unfairly manipulate election rules and target Americans based on how they look or talk. There is overwhelming evidence that unfair voting rules remain a very real threat--too many political operatives currently manipulate rules to diminish the voices of growing minority communities.

His thoughts continue here.

Arizona: Voter Registration and the Road Ahead

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This commentary was cross-posted to Election Law @ Moritz.

June arrived with two election law cases at the Supreme Court. One is still pending: a highly anticipated decision on section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The other, more frequently overlooked, was decided yesterday. And there are some quirks of the opinion that seem to depart from the swiftly congealing conventional wisdom that the states might actually have "won," and now need only run out the clock.

The case is called Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., but it has bounced through the courts under various names for seven years. In 2004, Arizona voters passed Prop 200, increasing identification requirements at the polls (one valid photo ID or two non-photo documents with name and current address) and requiring new voters to submit documentary proof of citizenship with a voter registration form.

There are policy reasons to question the merits of laws like these, whose costs can be larger than their benefits. Americans do not emerge from the womb with paperwork stamped on their skin, and as our Medicaid experience demonstrates, there are real individuals born in the country who do not have documentation of their citizenship readily available; the burdens on those people have to be assessed against the minimal fraud that such requirements incrementally deter, over and above prosecution and deportation. (Incidentally, it's not unusual for popular initiatives to disproportionately burden a minority of residents; that's a problem I've called to the Court's attention in the also-still-pending Prop 8 case.) But today's decision had little to do with those policy questions, or on the constitutional limits of that cost-benefit assessment.

Campaign Finance's Not-So-Final Exam

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

This op-ed originally appeared on Jurist

For better or worse, a professor's thoughts are never far from final exams. The best exams, I think, test students' understanding not just of the governing rules, but the legal rationales that drive them. And it's no secret that in devising hypothetical questions for exams, professors often turn to potential scenarios that they've otherwise been mulling: scenarios that present tricky issues forcing the better students to dig beneath the surface. Often, these exam issues are drawn from pending or recent cases.

For better or worse, a professor's thoughts are never far from final exams. The best exams, I think, test students' understanding not just of the governing rules, but the legal rationales that drive them. And it's no secret that in devising hypothetical questions for exams, professors often turn to potential scenarios that they've otherwise been mulling: scenarios that present tricky issues forcing the better students to dig beneath the surface. Often, these exam issues are drawn from pending or recent cases.

And sometimes, the cases -- like the Supreme Court's decision last week to hear McCutcheon v. FEC -- are drawn from the exams.

In May 2011, I asked the following question on my election law exam:

Federal law imposes aggregate limits on individual campaign contributions over a two-year period. Individuals may not contribute more than $46,200 (total) to federal candidates, with no more than $2,500 to any single candidate. (These limits pertain to contributions to federal candidates only, and do not include separate limits on the aggregate amounts that individuals may give to PACs and political parties.)

Clark Tuckerberg is a social media entrepreneur and multi-billionaire. He has "friended" more than 200 members of Congress and more than 30 US Senators on Facebook -- and he would like to demonstrate that, to him, "friending" is a real commitment. He acknowledges that he may not give more than $2,500 to any single candidate. However, he would like to give $2,500 to each of the candidates that he has "friended," which would put him well over the aggregate limit.

With voting, there's no place like home

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

In a recent New York Times "Campaign Stops" piece, I mentioned concerns about citizens undermining the integrity of the election by attempting to impose and enforce the "law of their gut" rather than the law on the books.

One prominent example concerns the concept of domicile. Domicile shows up in different ways in the election process, but the most common misunderstanding has to do with where people are eligible to vote. Recent reports reveal that voters have been challenged in several states based on claims that they aren't eligible to vote where they're registered. These challenges often reflect a common gut instinct -- but more seldom reflect the law.

In several states, organizations "empowered" by a national organization called True the Vote have announced research finding registrations subject to challenge based on their addresses. This isn't the first time that people have been challenged based on unwarranted assumptions about their addresses -- voter caging schemes, for example, are a version of this.

The True the Vote approach apparently starts by combing large databases, flagging (for example) addresses where more than 6 people are registered. Other flags may include people registered at colleges or allegedly vacant lots.

They're aliiiiive! (Really. They're alive.)

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

Every year, late October brings pumpkin pie and horror movies and reports of deceased voters. The reports are, inevitably, spooky, with a hint of the comic macabre. And they are often followed by proposals to slash the voter rolls, with the  equivalent of an electoral chainsaw.

But now that the cobwebs have been brushed away in the clearer light of a November morning, most of the specters have vanished. Turns out that the undead hordes are too busy terrorizing your Tivos to be stealing your elections.

Most allegations of dead voters rely on attempts to match large computerized databases of dead people to large computerized voter rolls. And they fall prey to three basic fallacies.

First, bad data. Sometimes people listed as dead are not really dead. Investigative reporters at Scripps-Howard have discovered that the Social Security's Death Master Index, one of the most-used registries in the country, falsely announces the deaths of nearly 1,200 living Americans per month. Think of these legitimate voters as buried alive.

And sometimes, people listed as voting did not really vote. Election records are imperfect. In the press of a busy day at the polls, people sometimes sign the wrong line of a pollbook. And in the press of a busy canvass after the election, officials sometimes hit errant keystrokes, recording a vote that a deceased individual did not actually cast. Think of these legitimate souls resting peacefully, without braving the lines at the polls.

Second, bad matching. These reports often rely on comparing names and birthdates. But in any large pool of records, it's surprisingly common for two different people to share the same date of birth. Statistics prove that if you've got 460 people named "Michael Myers" in your population, it's virtually guaranteed that two will share the same date of birth. Which means that in millions of computer records, Michael Myers, dearly departed, may not be the Michael Myers casting a ballot. Florida governor Rick Scott was actually purged from the rolls in 2006 by such an error.

Third, bad timing. Though the dead rarely vote, voters do sometimes pass away. There have been reports of voters casting early votes or absentee ballots, and then shuffling off this mortal coil.

Take away the mistakes and misinterpretations, and you take away most of the howling behind the dead voter allegations. When real researchers spend real time following up on the claims, they leave at most a handful of oddities unanswered, almost exclusively in the absentee system. An enterprising reporter dug deep into the St. Louis -- St. Louis! -- rolls in 2007, and every single suggestion of gravesite voting evaporated. Sometimes the follow-up dispels the ghosts entirely.

There is more legitimacy to the notion that registered voters remain on the rolls after they die -- not that they cast ballots, but that the records linger. The volume of deceased registrants is also often overblown, for all the reasons above, but the leftover records do end up amounting to more than a handful. When election officials do their job well, these records are removed from the rolls, slowly and deliberately and in the off-season, with safeguards to ensure that no legitimate voter is caught up in the sweep.

That sort of careful list maintenance is a far cry from the hurried and harried last-minute purges urged by the purveyors of dead voter tales. Overbroad actions in the waning days of an cycle can only undermine the integrity of a election by jeopardizing the rights of real, live, eligible voters. And that is what's really scary about the dead voter stories of late fall.

Company at 30,000 feet: Plane travel and the voter ID controversy

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

Legal fights over new restrictions on voters are all over the news these days, with fights over "voter ID" rules often front and center. The fight is not over whether voters should show that they are who they say they are -- every state has some method for that. Instead, the current fights are over a set of restrictive rules that newly limit the ways voters may offer that proof. In 2011 or 2012, several states passed laws prohibiting eligible voters from casting valid ballots at the polling place if they do not have particular government-issued photo identification cards; most have been blocked, at least temporarily, by the courts, and will not be in effect for the coming election.

I've been fighting the most restrictive laws since 2005, as unnecessary regulations whose "cure" is worse
many times worse than the "disease" of voter fraud they ostensibly confront. Most eligible citizens have the right kind of government-issued photo ID. But reliable statistics show that many of us -- between 1.2% and 16%, depending on the particular numerator and denominator -- don't. And voting isn't just a right for most of us.

Proponents of restrictive ID laws often fall back on the argument that a government-ID requirement for voting is reasonable, because having an ID is a purported necessity in modern life. You have to have an ID to board a plane, they say. It's a curious example they choose.

The first problem is that the example is irrelevant. Voting is at the heart of our constitutional order, guaranteed to every eligible citizen. Boarding a plane is a nice perk. The republic doesn't crumble if the people don't fly on planes.

But the example is also dead wrong. Actually, you don't have to have an ID to board a plane. I proved this firsthand, when I had the opportunity to testify before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee just over one year ago, on the propriety of voter ID laws. As recounted here in an ACS brief, when I got to Los Angeles airport, I had no photo ID in my wallet, government-issued or otherwise. Instead, I had two credit cards, a firing range card, a health insurance card, a blood donor card, a coffee shop frequent visitor card, and a few business cards, all without photos. I was also carrying a checkbook.

Scholarship in the Swirl of an Election

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

Every four years, the presidential election contest dominates the news, bringing with it not only daily policy and political scuffles, but plentiful skirmishes over the rules for conducting elections and persuading the electorate. Every 20 years, the presidential election roughly coincides with the decennial redistricting process, as political lines are drawn to restructure representation across the country. The year 2012 represents one of those comet-like convergences, where the full infrastructure of democracy is not only buffeted by winds of change but becomes suddenly, fleetingly, salient -- and new and old media alike examine every development in painstaking detail.

In such an environment, just as vulcanologists flock to the latest eruption, election law scholars tend to find the daily developments irresistible. We rationalize the engagement by understanding that we can offer context and texture and a bit of both legal and historical perspective. But when we're most honest with ourselves, perhaps it's just that we want to be where the action is, in a field to which we've devoted our professional lives. Your Loyola election law faculty aren't immune -- both Jessica Levinson and I have attempted to engage the day-to-day in a way that we hope contributes more good than harm.

But perhaps particularly in the swirl of an election season, it's also tremendously useful to be able to step back as well. Which is why I'm grateful for two opportunities this past week to think more deeply about election law scholarship that's not dependent on yesterday's headline.

On Thursday, Josh Douglas (Kentucky), Derek Muller (Pepperdine), and Jessica Levinson (Loyola) joined me at Loyola for a small junior scholars' gathering on the law of democracy, taking advantage of Josh's trip to southern California. The research, though preliminary, promises to be both bold and diverse, encompassing an investigation of civil pleading pertinent to election litigation, an examination of the curious constitutional structure of candidate qualifications, and a reconceptualization of the fundamental struggle at the heart of campaign finance law. I learned quite a bit, and am grateful for my colleagues' critique of my own early thoughts.

Then, on Friday, I took Rick Hasen up on a gracious offer to join him at UC Irvine for an election law symposium featuring many of my heroes in the field. The symposium was titled "Foxes, Henhouses, and Commissions: Assessing the Nonpartisan Model in Election Administration, Redistricting, and Campaign Finance." The papers and discussants' remarks represented a broad array of outlook and methodology, from the rigorously empirical to the richly philosophical to the painstakingly historical. The room was super heated, but the discussion was coolly engaging; proceedings are here for those who wish to see for themselves. I'm delighted to have had such spectacular fora to develop long-term research in the midst of the madness of the moment.

The Real Potential in Albany's Mishap of the Moment

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

The lines of our election districts lie at the core of our democracy. They decide whose voices are represented, and to what degree. New York's districting process rarely serves as a model of civic virtue. But now, there's an unusual chance for change.

In Albany, legislators choose their voters more than the other way around. It is a Twilight Zone process; incumbents purport "To Serve the Public," and cycle after cycle, we discover it's a cookbook that they're using.

Where legislators are in charge of drawing their own lines, there is a natural tendency to choose private and partisan self-interest over the public interest. If you had the capacity to ensure your own job security, no matter how well you performed ... wouldn't you do the same?

Both Democrats and Republicans have used this process to their advantage, and to the detriment of voters of every stripe, in New York no less than elsewhere. The current process is bogged down as incumbents bicker over who can grab more for themselves. Governor Cuomo has boldly tried to break the cycle, by threatening a veto of the legislature's latest, something predecessors have been unwilling to do.

The veto threat is right. But maybe, just maybe, not the veto itself. A veto would likely throw matters definitively to the courts, which is a slow and expensive route -- and involves a responsibility the courts don't want. Just look at the ongoing mess in Texas.

The Supreme Court's Texas Mess

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

"Don't mess with Texas": this time, the Supreme Court should have listened. The Court has injected itself into a 10-gallon disaster that grows messier with every passing day. Today, the Court hears argument. If only it could slowly back out of the room.

The problem arises (again) from a Texas redistricting plan. Last cycle, Texas re-redrew a court's lines, causing Democrats to twice flee the state to gut a legislative quorum. This caused Tom DeLay to set federal law enforcement on their tail, which in turn earned Mr. DeLay a formal admonishment. The resulting districts were struck down under the Voting Rights Act; the Supreme Court found that they "took away the Latinos' opportunity because Latinos were about to exercise it."

This time around, the Texas legislature drew lines without calling in air support. Because of past discrimination, Texas is subject to section 5 of the Voting Rights Act; the state must "preclear" election-related changes to ensure that they don't make life worse for minority citizens. A change can't legally be implemented until it's precleared. Most jurisdictions submit section 5 changes to the Department of Justice, which has a relatively speedy procedure for assessing preclearance. The DOJ has precleared every statewide map that it's considered this cycle. Texas chose, instead, to go to a DC federal court.

The DC court found that it couldn't yet preclear the Texas plans. Texas had used the wrong standards in assessing whether it complied with the Act. And besides, said the court, there were serious allegations that Texas had illegally intended to discriminate in drawing the maps, and those allegations needed to be worked out at trial.

Ten Lawyers Leaping: A New Year's Redistricting

Associate Professor Justin Levitt, published "Ten Lawyers Leaping: A New Year's Redistricting" on the Huffington Post on Jan. 3, 2012:
"The 2011 holiday season brought plenty of election-related tidings, of comfort and joy to some and consternation to others. Now, in the first days of 2012, it's useful to take stock of our democratic infrastructure -- and particularly, since we're in the thick of the redistricting cycle, to gauge our national progress in drawing the lines that will determine representation for the next ten years (or until Texas decides to re-redraw its lines, once again).

Read the full post here.

Looking back at Prawsfest! 9

By Associate Professor Justin Levitt

As mentioned here, together with David Fagundes over at Southwestern, we had the privilege of hosting Prawfsfest! Nine over the last few days. David Horton and I had the privilege of bookending the workshop -- I offered myself as the first victim of the proceedings, and David batted cleanup; given his Prawfsfest preview, I'm eagerly awaiting the formal unveiling of David's piece. It's an impressive holiday gift to the legal academic world.

There are a few signature elements of the Prawfsfest format, beyond the raw opportunity to connect with some outstanding colleagues: papers are limited in length so that everyone can read all of them, everyone actually reads (and is prepared to discuss) all of them, and just about all of the participants are junior faculty, which makes for a particularly accommodating space to discuss ideas in the early stages of incubation. And, true to form, the workshop was tremendously useful, with plenty of both entertaining and informative besides. (Droid flight dynamics, I'm lookin' at you.) I presented an early-stage work tentatively titled "Motive Matters," assessing the Court's tendency to confuse judicial competence in assessing governmental motive with constitutional forgiveness of motives beyond the pale. I'll be investing more work on the piece, aided substantially by the exceedingly thoughtful feedback that I received. And I'll sincerely hope that the other participants found the conference as enjoyable as I did. Thanks to all -- and particularly thanks to David Fagundes for pulling it all together. Prawfsfest! X, the bar's been set high.