Magazine Archive
“Responsibility for the Future” - Voting and Political Participation in Our County
This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, when women “got” the vote, to use the common way of phrasing the impact of the amendment. But this achievement was not handed over as a gift; it came about through massive political participation and decades-long protests of non-voting stakeholders: women of all races...
Read ArticleVotes for Women, the Constitution and the Courts
“The most fundamental right and obligation is to participate in choosing the people who will make the laws of our country,” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in the Annenberg Classroom’s award-winning film The 19th Amendment: A Woman’s Right to Vote. The 19th Amendment was ratified 100 years ago on August 26, 1920, but...
Read Article"Don't Get Mad, Get Elected" - Lessons from Local Lawyers' Campaigns for Office
A Roundtable with Guest Editor, Marta Vanegas For this issue, we approached a handful of local lawyers who ran for political office, and asked them a few of our most pressing questions. We interviewed Candace Andersen, a former prosecuting attorney in her hometown of Honolulu and civil practitioner with a law firm in Morgan Hill,...
Read ArticleThe Conference of California Bar Associations: Lawyers Speaking Up to Improve California's Laws
In California, there seems to be a statute or regulation covering every aspect of life and business – except when there is not. Sometimes those laws are incomprehensible. Sometimes the laws are impractical. And sometimes the law is an ass. As lawyers, we interpret and apply statutes day in and day out. We know just...
Read ArticleAll California Registered Voters Will Receive Vote-By-Mail Ballots, But Litigation Over Voting Rights Intensifies
On May 8, 2020, Governor Newsom issued an executive order requiring ballots for the presidential election to be mailed to all registered voters. The order was a response to the coronavirus pandemic and an effort to protect public health and the right to vote, but it drew a prompt legal challenge from the Republican National...
Read ArticleTouching the Third Rail: The California Initiative Process, Proposition 13, and the Effort to Fix It
In October 1911, shortly after California progressive Hiram Johnson’s landslide gubernatorial win,[1] voters in a special election passed several measures, among them a state constitutional amendment establishing the California initiative process, giving voters the right to enact legislation.[2] The initiative, referendum, and recall[3] provide the voters equal power to the legislative branch, effectively creating a...
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