ANALYSIS
5
Bush v. Gore No Longer a Judicial Joke
By Neal Colgrass
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Posted Dec 22, 08 8:18 PM CST
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(Newser)
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Once considered an intellectually trivial, one-off ruling, Bush v. Gore is gaining ground as legal precedent, the New York Times reports. The 2000 Supreme Court decision has been cited some 20 times in the Minnesota Al Franken/Norm Coleman recount case, and influenced a recent Ohio ruling on voting machines. Its effect? That a state can't "value one person's vote over that of another" after granting everyone an equal vote, the ruling said.
Yet law schools have roundly mocked the logic of the decision that effectively made George W. Bush president. “It hasn’t been cited even in cases where it should have been cited,” one professor said. “The case is radioactive." Even the Supreme Court warned that it set a weak precedent. But "there is a sense that some of the initial reaction was an over-reaction," said one analyst.