Things to Read This Week (1/19)
Election Law, Shugerman, ACX
Redistricting Without Tradeoffs, by Nick Stephanopoulos, relies on “ensembles of billions of district maps generated randomly by cutting-edge computer algorithms” and concludes that “contrary to the conventional wisdom of courts and scholars, redistricting tradeoffs are generally weak to nonexistent. In most cases, progress along one dimension (like compactness, partisan fairness, or minority representation) requires no regression along another axis.”
Qualifications to be President and the Role of the House and Senate in the Electoral Vote Count, by John Harrison. Another election law piece, and in some ways a sequel to his “Nobody For President,” arguing that the House and Senate should count votes for a disqualified presidential candidate. I think this is probably right, for reasons Mike Paulsen and I talked about it in a few footnotes, though I have some lingering questions about Horace Greeley, about “regularly given,” and about the Necessary and Proper Clause.
The Unitary Theorists’ Appointments Clause Problems, by Jed Shugerman, arguing that the argument that the common law rule that removal is incidental to appointment does not support the unitary executive, contra Wurman, Bamzai, and Prakash (and contra me, too).
The Dilbert Afterlife, an obituary of Scott Adams by Scott Alexander. Not really law-related, but such a masterpiece. Also it has important lessons for law professors, who find it similarly hard to accept that our expertise in one limited domain can’t be arbitraged to the many others where we might wish it could.
