The Unfinished Election Of 2000: Leading Scholars Examine America's Strangest Election

by Jack Rakove

Overview

The Unfinished Election of 2000 gathers America's leading historians, political scientists, and constitutional lawyers to examine the strange and unprecedented events of the 2000 election. Together, these essays offer an election book very different from the ones we are too familiar with: not a journalistic account of campaigning and media strategy but a reflective assessment of the strangest election in modern American history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465068388
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	09/05/2002
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jack N. Rakove is the Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University and lives in Palo Alto, California.

Pamela S. Karlan is Montgomery Professor of Public Law at Stanford Law School and lives in Palo Alto.

Larry Kramer is Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and lives in New York City.

Alex Keyssar is Matthew G. Stirling, Jr., Professor of History and Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Stephen Holmes is Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and lives in New York City.

Henry Brady is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in Oakland, California.

John Cooper is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction: Dangling Questions	xi
Part 1	The Politics of a Presidential Election
1	"The Leaving It": The Election of 2000 at the Bar of History	3
2	Trust the People: Political Party Coalitions and the 2000 Election	39
3	The Right to Vote and Election 2000	75
Part 2	The Court and the Constitution
4	The Supreme Court in Politics	105
5	Equal Protection: Bush v. Gore and the Making of a Precedent	159
6	The E-College in the E-Age	201
	Afterword: Can a Coin-Toss Election Trigger a Constitutional Earthquake?	235
	Index	253
	About the Contributors	265

Editorial Reviews

Seven law professors and historians weigh in on the 2000 election in scholarly but lively essays. Pulitzer Prize-winning Stanford historian and political scientist Rakove (Original Meanings) calls it unfinished "not because of its inherent importance, but rather for what it revealed about our politics, institutions, and even the Constitution itself." These essays explore systemic foibles in U.S. politics with an eye toward wider contexts and deeper causes. John Milton Cooper Jr. and Henry Brady both contrast 2000 with the realigning election of 1896, when regional party dominance was reversed. Cooper stresses the normalcy of close elections, while Brady tracks regional flip-flops and analyzes political party coalitions in terms of the moral and economic issues influencing major demographic groups' partisan tilts. Alexander Keycard relates Florida's multiple forms of disenfranchisement to historical patterns, and Larry Kramer explicates the two major cases in both the Florida and the U.S. Supreme courts, concluding that the U.S. Supreme Court's final decision was "an extreme instance of a regular pattern" of conservative judicial activism that distrusts democratic processes. Pamela S. Karlan details the logical and historical development of equal-protection election law, illuminating major anomalies and contortions in Bush v. Gore. Rakove extensively critiques the electoral college, a somewhat accidental creation that, he says, never functioned as intended. Stephen Holmes casts the disenfranchisement of minority voters as an example of "selective defunding of public institutions," and disparages what he views as conservatives' ideological hypocrisy and liberals' romantic association of"judicial review with socially progressive causes." This fine multidisciplinary response could have a lasting impact on how Americans understand the 2000 election. 3 charts. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly