A Badly Flawed Election: Debating Bush V. Gore, the Supreme Court, and American Democracy - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565847377 ISBN 13: 9781565847378

Publisher: New Press, The, 2002

Synopsis

Essays by legal scholars examine the historical, political, and ethical ramifications of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Bush v. Gore.

About this title

About the Author:

Ronald Dworkin lives in New York and in London, and has a joint appointment at New York University, where he is a professor both in the law school and the philosophy department, and at University College, London. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His most recent book is Sovereign Virtue.

From Publishers Weekly:

Noted legal scholar Dworkin (Sovereign Virtue) introduces this collection as "a deeper inspection of and debate about" issues raised by the 2000 election and the Supreme Court's decision to stop the Florida recounts. But constitutional scholars Cass Sunstein, Richard H. Pildes and Richard A. Posner primarily recycle arguments made last year (in The Vote, which Sunstein co-edited, and Posner's Breaking the Deadlock), while discussions of the electoral college by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and political scientist Nelson W. Polsby are informative, but not innovative. Constitutional law scholar Lawrence Tribe, who represented Gore in early proceedings, highlights contradictions in the decision and its rationalization that others have overlooked, but only Lani Guinier seems actively engaged in synthesizing multiple strands of legal, historical and democratic concerns. She shares Pildes's belief that Bush v. Gore belongs to a larger pattern of cases constricting democratic participation, but Guinier puts it into a broader context. The Supreme Court's focus on equal treatment of ballots (rather than people), she argues, is part of a trend in which supposedly objective measures of merit literacy tests, SATs, etc. have been used to disfranchise and disempower blacks, Latinos and poor whites. She also contrasts American democratic practice with democracies that enjoy substantially higher participation rates and far less class bias. Dworkin and Sunstein both briefly, but effectively, critique Posner's justification of the Bush v. Gore decision, which he calls "pragmatic adjudication."
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Press, The
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1565847377
• ISBN 13: 9781565847378
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 344
• Editor: Dworkin Ronald