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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Idaho v. Stegall

Docket: 47612

Opinion Date: December 22, 2020

Judge: Roger S. Burdick

Areas of Law: Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

This case arose from a DUI suspect’s request to make a phone call from jail following his arrest. The State appealed a district court order granting Jeffery Stegall’s motion to suppress blood alcohol concentration (BAC) evidence obtained from a blood draw. The district court granted Stegall’s motion after determining that his right to due process had been violated when police officers at the jail refused his request to make a phone call. The State argued on appeal that the district court erred in determining Stegall’s due process rights were violated because the officers were not acting in bad faith when they failed to allow him access to a phone. To this, the Idaho Supreme Court disagreed, holding the district court did not err in determining the jail officers violated Stegall’s right to procedural due process when, despite his requests, they failed to allow him access to a phone for the purpose of contacting an attorney until the morning following his arrest. Accordingly, the district court’s order granting Stegall’s motion to suppress evidence of BAC was affirmed.