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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Pickerel Lake Outlet Ass'n v. Day County

Citation: SOUTH DAKOTA, 2020 S.D. 72

Opinion Date: December 22, 2020

Judge: Kern

Areas of Law: Tax Law

The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the circuit court concluding that Plaintiffs had standing to bring this declaratory judgment action challenging ad valorem property taxes that Day County assessed against them and upholding the disputed taxes, holding that the circuit court did not err. Plaintiffs were the Pickerel Lake Outlet Association, a South Dakota domestic non-profit corporation, and forty non-Indian owners of permanent improvements around Pickerel Lake. Plaintiffs claimed that federal law preempted taxation because their structures were on land held in trust for the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate or its members. The State defended the County's authority to levy the taxes, arguing that preemption did not apply and challenging Plaintiffs' standing to sue. The circuit court concluded that Plaintiffs had standing and upheld the County's authority to assess the taxes. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) Plaintiffs satisfied all the prerequisites for standing; and (2) the County was neither explicitly nor implicitly preempted by the provisions of 25 U.S.C. 5108 from assessing ad valorem taxes against Plaintiffs.