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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Courts - Continuing with: Indiana decisions cited in Coleman-Frankin Senate dispute
Updating these earlier ILB entries on the Coleman-Franken U.S. Senate election dispute in Minnesota, and their tie-ins to Indiana election law decisions, Indianapolis attorney Bill Groth has sent along a link to the Minnesota Supreme Court brief filed yesterday by the attorneys representine Al Franken, plus these observations:
Although losing a case at the U.S. Supreme Court is never a pleasant experience, I must say it is somewhat of a personal consolation that the attorneys representing Al Franken have seen fit to cite Crawford v. Marion County Election Board three separate times in their brief (pp. 24-26) filed today in the Minnesota Supreme Court to justify election officials' decision not to count abentee ballots that did not strictly comply with Minnesota statutes. Speaking as the attorney for the Indiana Democratic Party in that case, if the decision in favor of the State of Indiana in Crawford helps to insure the seating of the 60th Democratic senator, then the IDP's federal challenge to Indiana's photo ID law was most definitely worth the effort.By the way, I have a special fondness for retiring Justice Souter, who penned what I would have hoped would be the majority opinion in Crawford. On the other hand, his inability to persuade Justices Stevens and Kennedy in that case may be seen as confirming the one criticism some on the left have made about him--that although brilliant and consistent in his principled opposition to Scalia's originalism, he lacked the personal charisma and charms of his far more gregarious and worldly predecessor, Justice Brennan, who near the end of his long tenure on the Court had considerable success in crafting opinions that succeeded in attracting more conservative justices.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 12, 2009 09:02 AM
Posted to Courts in general