2008 Articles

Fig Leaves and Tea Leaves in the Supreme Court's Recent Election Law Decisions

Persily, Nathaniel A.

In the field of American election law, political developments and the Supreme Court's docket often progress along parallel tracks. Those tracks rarely intersect with such salience and notoriety as in the 2000 election controversy. More often, the issues the Supreme Court decides have immediate thematic relevance to the ongoing campaign, even when the Court is not actually deciding a case that grows out of the campaign itself. Such was the case with the Supreme Court's election law docket from the 2007-2008 term and the historic 2008 election. The five election law cases the Court decided hinted at ongoing controversies with incarnations in the 2008 campaign.