Suchergebnisse

Examines past cases of the US Supreme Court to argue that the Court's intervention in the presidential election of 2000 was a dramatic departure from its historical reluctance to become involved in overtly political matters. The Court resolutely avoided political questions until the reapportionment cases of the 1960s. Two significant features of those cases were that decisions were based on clear constitutional edicts & the Court only intervened when there was no other institutional actor capable of resolving the conflict. Since neither feature was present in Bush v. Gore, it is contended that the Court should have used more self-restraint. There is agreement with Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion that the Court failed to consider the risk of "undermining respect for the judicial process" when it jumped into the political controversy. Although abandonment of the political question doctrine in the 1960s opened the door for Court action on political matters, it is argued that it should not do so when there are compelling reasons not to, as in the case of Bush v. Gore. J. Lindroth