Courts & Law

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The U.S. Supreme Court opens its new term on the first Monday in October. Last week the Court held its pre-term conference. One decision was reached at conference. The Court — by an apparent unanimous vote — told lower-court judges not to insist on close-to-zero differences in the population of each of a state’s districts for choosing members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Lyle Denniston reports, Opinion recap: Hedging on “one person, one vote” : SCOTUSblog:

Zero variance” in population is not the new constitutional norm for redistricting, the Court made clear.  Just because computers can produce almost exactly equal-sized districts, the Constitution does not require it, the decision said.

After sitting on the case from West Virginia all summer long, the Court produced an eight-page, unsigned ruling that largely deferred to the wishes of that state’s legislature on how to craft the three districts for choosing its House delegation.  The opinion can be found here.  

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Tuesday’s ruling gave state legislators constitutional permission to have some variation in size between congressional districts, if the lawmakers do so to protect incumbents from having to run against each other, to avoid splitting up counties, and to avoid moving many people into a new district from the one where they had previously cast their votes.   In what appeared to be a novel new declaration, the Court stressed that lower courts should not demand that a state prove specifically how each of those goals would be satisfied by moving away from equally populated districts.    And, in another legal innovation, the Court said that a variation that is not really very big does not become a constitutionally suspect one just because a sophisticated computer program could be used to avoid nearly all such variations.

If the difference between a state’s largest House district and its smallest one is small — such as the 0.79% deviation in the West Virginia plan — that does not become unconstitutionally large just because it could be avoided by “technological advances in redistricting and mapping software.”

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

From The Last Word blog: A handful of actors from the Emmy award-winning TV series West Wing reprised their
roles in a campaign ad for the real-life sister of Mary McCormack, a.k.a Deputy
National Security advisor Kate Harper. This is some heavy hitter advertising for a down ballot judicial race. 'West Wing' reunites to walk and talk the vote:

Bridget Mary McCormack is running for Michigan state Supreme Court.
In a sketch littered with inside jokes, The West Wing team came together
to bring attention to the not-so-sexy issue of filling out the
non-partisan section of the voting ballot. This is how Michigan and 14
other states select their supreme court justices. As Bradley Whitford,
who reprised his role as Josh Lyman, explains, “In non-partisan
elections all across America, voters are leaving part of their ballot
blank. And they don’t even know it.”

So who is Bridget Mary
McCormack? According to the ad, she's a "married mother of four, dean at
Michigan law. Bridget has spent her entire career fighting for justice
for ordinary people for families with sick kids. For families of
domestic violence. She's fought to free innocent men and women and get
the actual criminals behind bars."

And in a TV-turned-reality twist, McCormack's husband, Steve Croley, currently works in the real West Wing as deputy counsel in the White House Counsel's Office.

Video below the fold.