Suchergebnisse

Maybe it shouldn't have been that big of a
surprise, if the U.S. Supreme Court eventually will use Callais v.
Landry to reduce the prominence race has in reapportionment.

This
week, the Court stayed
an order
by a three-judge panel that declared the congressional map that Louisiana had
enacted earlier this year was unconstitutional. That means that this plan,
which adds a majority-minority district to the single one in the 2022 map that
was subject
to litigation then statutorily replaced by this one, will be used for elections
this fall.

The panel appeared poised to issue its own map for
use if the Legislature, which it would not have, had acted to draw a remedial
map prior to its adjournment Jun. 3. By definition, it could not be the invalidated
map, and any other options but the revoked 2022 map or something extremely close
to it could not have been implemented in time by the state's Department of
State. In fact, although in the case of that preliminarily enjoined map State
argued it needed by the end of May, 2022 to have a map to run the subsequent
election, this time it declared May 15 was the cutoff despite the very similar
situations.

So, the Court majority of all six justices
nominated by Republican presidents took the state at its word, and on May 15
issued a stay. In one sense this surprised, both because of the alacrity of the
plaintiffs and efficiency of the panel in having the trial and rendering a
decision this far out from fall elections, and given the recent historical overview:
that when the adverse decision about the discarded 2022 map was rendered, over
a month closer to the election, the Court bided its time with the Fifth Circuit
first issuing a stay
and then over three weeks after the preliminary injunction the same six
justices stayed
it, on the basis that similar cases were to be (and would be eventually) considered.

But this time, that majority rushed right in, six
weeks prior to its action last time, to place temporarily into service the 2024
map – and was opposed by the three justices appointed by Democrats. This would
seem counterintuitive: if the majority questioned the constitutionality of the 2024
map, it would seem they might let the process play out at least until the remedial
map appeared by Jun. 4, well in advance of their stay two years ago the issuance
of which indicated they didn't see a problem in administering the election at
this same point in time. And the minority would have wanted a stay, keeping the
invalidated map in place, but instead in a dissent expressed a desire to see
the process play out.

These dynamics reveal, in fact, that the 2024 plan
is on thin constitutional ice for the majority and is a question the minority wishes
to avoid. Notably, even though the panel was brought a constitutional challenge,
it decided that question within the realm of existing jurisprudence and statute
– that defendants impermissibly used race as a sorting mechanism in map-drawing
to avoid dilution of black voting power, but only because it failed to satisfy statute
and court decisions around that question, principally over the matter of
whether black voters in the state could be grouped in two districts that each are
sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a
single-member district. Indeed, the panel stated it made no judgment on whether
it is possible to draw in Louisiana under present census numbers a two M/M map
that wouldn't violate the Equal Protection Clause, just that the 2024 map did.

That's the ballpark in which proponents of a two
M/M map wish to keep the controversy – they don't want the entire premise that race
has a special status that can override any other principle of reapportionment
to disappear. They would prefer the remedial mapping phase devolve into a
catfight about whether a plan is compliant with the existing interpretation
without any further investigation into the constitutionality of the whole
thing.

However, the Court majority has signaled it won't
leave that question alone. Significantly, its stay solely is on the basis of
the Purcell
Principle – the idea that courts should not change election rules during
the period just before an election because of the confusion that it will cause
for voters and the problems that doing so could cause for election officials;
it made no judgment on the panel's decision. Indeed, the dissent postulated that
it was too early to invoke the principle – which made sense given the majority's
handling two years ago – with the wishful thinking that there was no reason to
intervene so early.

Yet the majority disagrees because it seems likely
to take up the case, no matter what happens with it, to probe the constitutionality
of race's preferred position in reapportionment. That being its plan, there was
no reason to wait to pull the Purcell trigger where delaying in doing so might
provoke rushed lower court proceedings. Further, that decision isn't surprising
in that the Court did this – allow a two M/M map declared unconstitutional the decision
about which it wouldn't dispute to be used because of proximity to an election –
just about 30 years ago. In that instance, a 1992 two M/M map declared unconstitutional
because of impermissible use of race was allowed to be used again because after
its revoking by a 1994 two M/M map that latter map also was declared
unconstitutional for the same reason while election qualifying already was occurring.

In short, the Court's stay tells us nothing about
what it thinks about the panel's decision to toss a map based on a racially-gerrymandered
district that was very similar to what another panel tossed three decades ago
that it never disputed. It does speak volumes that a majority appears eager to
visit the issue of whether the Constitution permits drawing of district lines
using race as a preferred factor, perhaps using this case as its vehicle to do
so.

The Tweed Family Papers consists primarily of correspondence between Mrs. Richard Tweed and her children, relatives, and friends. Diaries, essays and poetry written by family members, newspaper clippings (photocopies), and financial and legal material are also included, as are a handful of photographs. All related primarily to the life of Mrs. Richard Tweed and her descendants. ; Mrs. Richard Tweed, upon whom the majority of the materials focus, was the sister-in-law of William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed, who controlled the Democratic political machine at New York City's Tammany Hall during the mid-19th century. He and his associates misappropriated public funds on a large scale, leading to his arrest and imprisonment in 1871. ; The Tweed Family Papers are organized by the following categories: Correspondence, Newspapers, Literary Production, Photographs, Financial Material, Printed Material, Scrapbook Material, Legal Material, and Artifacts. ; Tweed Family Papers, 1836-1932 and undated, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas ; Box 1, File 12

The Tweed Family Papers consists primarily of correspondence between Mrs. Richard Tweed and her children, relatives, and friends. Diaries, essays and poetry written by family members, newspaper clippings (photocopies), and financial and legal material are also included, as are a handful of photographs. All related primarily to the life of Mrs. Richard Tweed and her descendants. ; Mrs. Richard Tweed, upon whom the majority of the materials focus, was the sister-in-law of William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed, who controlled the Democratic political machine at New York City's Tammany Hall during the mid-19th century. He and his associates misappropriated public funds on a large scale, leading to his arrest and imprisonment in 1871. ; The Tweed Family Papers are organized by the following categories: Correspondence, Newspapers, Literary Production, Photographs, Financial Material, Printed Material, Scrapbook Material, Legal Material, and Artifacts. ; Tweed Family Papers, 1836-1932 and undated, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas ; Box 1, File 8

We consider an M/G/1 queueing system where the customers may leave the queue if their services do not commence before an exponentially distributed random time. The (conditional) offered waiting time distribution is approximated by a gamma distribution via matching the first and second moments of the actual waiting time. A simulation study is conducted to assess the accuracy of the approximation and it reveals that the approximation performs satisfactorily under general conditions on service time distributions.

An obituary for J. M. Emmert, physician and Iowa state politician.

An obituary for the Iowan veteran and politician Elbert M. Sargent.

The article is devoted to the 110 anniversary of the birth of the Belarusian scientist, the founder of the section of chemical science – Chemistry of solids, the organizer and the first director of Institute of the General and Inorganic Chemistry of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, academician of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus – Mikhail Mikhaylovich Pavlyuchenko. In the article, the career devoted to search of the implication and chemical mechanism of the processes proceeding with participation of solids is described. Identification of the defining stages (limiting stages) and regularities of thermal dissociation reactions and synthesis of different classes and various structure of substances, as well as the definition of ways to operate these processes are described in this paper. His pedagogical and practical activities were purposeful, he looked for and found the young people interested in scientific research, excited them with his ideas, prepared 40 candidates and 3 Doctors of Chemistry. Together with the academician N. F. Ermolenko and the engineering structure of the institute, he prepared, proved the ways and possibilities of use and enrichment of sylvinites of the Starobinsky field, and repeatedly reported for the government and wide audience on importance of chemical industry development in Belarus. His course of life is a service to science and the Homeland.