ABSTRACT
The most curious feature about election law scholarship and adjudication is the degree to which it is theoretically rudderless. The point of discussing judicial review here does get to the issue of the connection between election law and political theory. If one looks at Supreme Court judicial review over the last 30 years, one criticism of it has been its minimalist nature. While not a full-blown theory, the Court nonetheless describes at least a crude version of a democratic theory that supports its constitutional arguments. Debates over the role of money in politics potentially implicate a host of issues. The cornerstone for how the Supreme Court has framed such debate is in Buckley v. Valeo and legal challenges to the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act amendments. One last area of election law that demonstrates a lack of theorizing on the part of the Court addresses partisan gerrymandering. One-person, one-vote was a redistricting revolution launched from the equal protection clause.
