Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: No Exam

This is a survey course American election law. Topics include democratic theory; the structure of republican government; the sources of state and federal power to regulate the electoral system; distribution of the franchise and the right to vote; apportionment, representation and gerrymandering; racial discrimination and the Voting Rights Act; the regulation of candidacy; the party system; election administration; and campaign finance. Throughout, we will try both to discern the social and philosophical assumptions that underlie contemporary election law doctrine and to determine whether existing legal frameworks effectively institutionalize those assumptions.