The Twenty-Sixth Amendment and the Real Rigging of Georgia’s Election

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR

Illinois law dean Vikram David Amar explains why Georgia’s law allowing persons 75 years and older to get absentee ballots for all elections in an election cycle with a single request, while requiring younger voters to request absentee ballots separately for each election, is a clear violation of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Dean Amar acknowledges that timing may prevent this age discrimination from being redressed in 2020, but he calls upon legislatures and courts to understand the meaning of this amendment and prevent such invidious disparate treatment of voters in future years.

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COVID Comes to Federal Death Row—It Is Time to Stop the Madness

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College—explains the enhanced risk of COVID-19 infection in the federal death row in Terre Haute, not only among inmates but among those necessary to carry out executions. Professor Sarat calls upon the Trump administration and other officials to focus on saving, rather than taking, lives inside and outside prison.

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Doherty v. Civil Service Commission

Docket: SJC-12855

Opinion Date: December 21, 2020

Judge: Kafker

Areas of Law: Government & Administrative Law

The Supreme Judicial Court vacated the judgment of superior court finding that the Civil Service Commission had jurisdiction to review Plaintiff's appeal of the discipline of loss of two days of accrued leave time imposed by the Department of State Police, holding that the Commission did not have subject matter jurisdiction. On appeal, the Department argued that the superior court erred in concluding that the Commission had jurisdiction over the disciplinary sanction because loss of accrued leave time does not fall within the scope of appealable matters expressly contemplated by Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 22C, 13 and Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 31, 41-45. In response, the Commission argued that even if loss of accrued leave time is not expressly contemplated by the statutes, it is equivalent to a suspension, which the Commission had jurisdiction to review. The Supreme Judicial Court agreed with the Department, holding that the Commission did not have subject matter jurisdiction under the statutes to hear Plaintiff's appeal of loss of two days of accrued leave time.