[Download] "Imposing Necessary Boundaries on Judicial Discretion in Ballot Access Cases (Twenty-Fourth Federalist Society Student Symposium, Law and Freedom) (Case Note)" by Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy " eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Imposing Necessary Boundaries on Judicial Discretion in Ballot Access Cases (Twenty-Fourth Federalist Society Student Symposium, Law and Freedom) (Case Note)
- Author : Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
- Release Date : January 22, 2005
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 312 KB
Description
In recent years, when the Supreme Court has reviewed a state's regulation of political parties' ability to define their membership, it has done so under the framework of the First Amendment right to freedom of association. (1) Although the Constitution grants state legislatures broad power to regulate the manner in which elections are conducted, (2) the Court has held that regulations imposing severe burdens on associational rights are subject to strict judicial scrutiny. (3) Lesser burdens, however, are upheld as long as they advance important state interests in a reasonable, nondiscriminatory manner. (4) Some academics have criticized this approach, arguing that when the Court analyzes the validity of electoral regulations through the lens of associational rights, it will grapple inadequately with underlying issues of democratic openness and competition. (5) Last Term, in Clingman v. Beaver, (6) the Supreme Court, again gazing through the lens of associational freedom, upheld an Oklahoma statute that prevented a political party from allowing voters registered with other parties to vote in its primary, dismissing arguments that the statute burdened the associational freedoms of both the party and the voters. (7) In upholding the statute, the Court rightly declined to use the First Amendment to impose upon Oklahoma its own ideas of democracy, and thus avoided the precarious conclusion that voters may be constitutionally entitled to simultaneously associate with multiple political parties. Clingman therefore supports the notion of a limited role for the First Amendment in judicial enforcement of political competition.