‘The details matter,’ says constitutional scholar
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11/05/2020
Contacts for media: Nancy Cicco, 978-934-4944, Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu and Christine Gillette, 978-758-4664, Christine_Gillette@uml.edu
As the country waits to learn the winner of the presidential election, President Donald Trump’s legal challenges to vote outcomes in battleground states may not all be without merit, according to a UMass Lowell constitutional expert available for interviews on the subject.
So far, Trump’s reelection campaign has filed legal claims to end vote counting in Pennsylvania and Michigan, undertake a vote recount in Wisconsin, where it charges there are voting irregularities, and challenge the handling of ballots in Georgia. The campaign has also claimed voting irregularities in Nevada. The president on Wednesday said he intends to take matters to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.
UMass Lowell’s Morgan Marietta, an authority on constitutional law and the Supreme Court, says any winning legal argument by either Trump or challenger Joe Biden’s camp would turn on the question of which branch of government has the power to set election laws.
“If there is a meaningful court challenge, it will be perceived to come down to partisanship, but that will be wrong. It will come down to competing visions of the role of the judiciary in our constitutional order,” Marietta said. “It is not about what is decided as much as it is about who decides. Changes in election law put in place by the representative branches of individual states will likely be upheld by the high court, while changes instituted at the will of judges, without a grant of authority or clear violation of a right, will likely not be. The details will count and the outcome is uncertain.”
Marietta is also available to discuss:
- The merits of each legal challenge Trump has filed and which have the best chance of advancing to the U.S. Supreme Court;
- The similarities and differences between lawsuits filed in the 2020 presidential election and in the 2000 race, when the Supreme Court declared George W. Bush the president.
Marietta is an associate professor of political science at UMass Lowell and fellow in the university’s Center for Public Opinion. He is the co-author of the book “One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy,” which examines the deep divides at play in U.S. politics. Marietta’s articles about the Supreme Court and constitutional issues are widely published.
To arrange an interview with him via phone, email, Skype or Zoom, contact Nancy Cicco at Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu or 978-934-4944 or Christine Gillette at Christine_Gillette@uml.edu or 978-758-4664.