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33 A.L.I. Rep. 1 (2010-2011)

handle is hein.ali/alireporter0033 and id is 1 raw text is: DEDICATED TO CLARIFYING AND IMPROVING THE LAW
fr  The President's Letter
Recent Elections Demonstrate Need for ALT Project on Election Law

The elections of fall are over, except for
recounts and for some still-bruised feel-
ings in certain quarters. The process and
the results offer many issues for lawyers,
scholars, and judges to think and talk about.
Of direct interest to the ALI will be those
elections that had disputes, the resolution
of which will give Ned Foley, the Reporter
for our new project on election law, and his
Advisers much to consider in their work to
improve the law in this area. (See the article
on this page.)

Issues of campaign financing, including
the implications from the much discussed
Citizens United decision (Citizens United
v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S. Ct.
876 (2010)), the redistricting to come, and
unresolved questions about voter registra-
tion and voter identification have important
and controversial aspects that may take our
attention as time goes forward. However,
to me no single event is more notewor-
thy than the voters' rejection of the three
Iowa Supreme Court Justices who found

themselves removed from the bench, appar-
ently because of their participation in the
unanimous decision holding that the state
statute denying recognition to gay marriage
was unconstitutional (Varnum v. Brien, 763
N.W2d 862 (Iowa 2009)).
Think about what would have happened to
our country if citizens in some of our states
had the ability to remove the judges who
issued opinions that followed the holdings
of Brown v. Board of Education. Those
judges faced death threats and unpleasant-
ness in their communities, but never threats
to their power to decide cases or to their
independence. How is the delivery of justice
impacted when a judge risks voter backlash
in deciding how to rule on a request to
stay a death sentence, or when a court's
decision in favor of a foreign company in
a commercial contract dispute could mean
that some local jobs will be lost? These have
been serious questions throughout unsettled
times in American history. But perhaps the
speed and pervasiveness of our modern

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