Understanding the 2000 Election: A Guide to the Legal Battles That Decided the Presidency

About the Book

Paperback Edition: Updated and with a New Foreword
The nation will not soon forget the drama of the 2000 presidential election. For five weeks we were transfixed by the legal clashes that enveloped the country from election night to the Gore concession. It was instant history, and will be studied by historians, lawyers, political scientists, media critics and others for years to come.
Even for those who followed the events most closely, the legal twists and turns of the post-election struggles seemed at times bewildering. We witnessed manual recounts of election ballots, GOP federal court lawsuits challenging those recounts, two Florida Supreme Court opinions, lawsuits over butterfly and absentee ballots, questions about the role of the Florida legislature and the United States Congress in resolving presidential election disputes, and two United States Supreme Court decisions, the second of which finally handed the election to Bush. Although the 2000 Presidency was decided through much legal wrangling, one should not have to be a lawyer to understand how we came to have Bush rather than Gore as our President in that hotly contested election.
Understanding the 2000 Election offers an accessible, comprehensive guide to the legal battles that finally gave George W. Bush the Presidency five weeks after election night. Meant to stand next to and clarify the numerous journalistic and personal accounts of the election drama, Understanding the 2000 Election offers a offers a step-by-step, non-partisan explanation and analysis of the major legal issues involved in resolving the presidential contest. The volume also offers a clear overview of the Electoral College, its history, what would be involved in switching over to a direct election, and the likely future of the Presidential electoral process. While some still decry the 2000 election outcome as the result of political manipulation rather than the rule of law, Greene shows that almost every legal conclusion of the post-election struggle can be understood through the application of legal principle, rather than politics.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Background1 Winning the Presidency: The Electoral Vote Part I. Counting by Hand2 Manual Recounts: In Florida, and Across the Nation 3 Protesting the Election: What Sort of Deadline WasNovember 14? 434 Contesting the Election: What Does the Law Mean by "Rejection of Legal Votes"? 5 Challenging Hand Counts in Federal CourtPart II. The Bush Attack on the Florida Supreme Court6 The "Safe-Harbor" Provision and Article II of the Constitution7 Article II of the U.S. Constitution8 The U.S. Supreme Court Asks for Clari?cationPart III. The End of the Road9 The U.S. Supreme Court Ends the ElectionPart IV. The Wild-Card Lawsuits10 The "Butter?y Ballot"11 Absentee BallotsPart V. The Legislative Role12 The Florida Legislature13 The U.S. CongressAfterword Notes Acknowledgments Index About the Author

About the Author :

Abner Greene is a Professor at the Fordham University School of Law, specializing in constitutional law. He made more than 80 media appearances in a wide array of television, radio, and newspaper venues during the resolution of the 2000 election. He became the ABC News Radio regular legal analyst, appeared on ABC World News Tonight, CNN, NPR, Talk of the Nation, and C-Span and was quoted several times in the New York Times. Greene clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in the 1987 and 1988 terms.

Review :
"Superbly organized, with clarity and concision, Greene's book offers a highly readable, nonpartisan guidebook for those who don't speak legalese." --The National Journal"When future historians chronicle the battle of Bush v. Gore, they'll turn to Understanding the 2000 Election. Greene provides a clear, sophisticated, and accessible guide through the thicket of law and politics that surrounded the most surreal Presidential election of modern times." --George Stephanopoulos "Abner Greene is not only an outstanding legal analyst but agifted storyteller. He has given us an extraordinarily thoughtful, illuminating and (happily) highly readable account of the various legal battles fought in the five weeks after the 2000 Election. The author promises to break down the complexity of the legal issues so lawyers and nonlawyers alike can follow along--and he succeeds brilliantly." --Yale Kamisar, Clarence Darrow Distinguished University Professor of Law, University of Michigan "The 2000 presidential election will be remembered as one of the most astonishing political, legal and constitutional events in American history. In Understanding the 2000 Election, Abner Greene traces each step in this extraordinary story with clarity and insight. With a careful eye for detail, and a generous perspective that highlights his sense of the good faith of each of the conflicting participants, Greene offers what will inevitably be a controversial understanding of these events that reveals the 2000 presidential election as a triumph of law and civility over brute politics and unprincipled power." --Geoffrey R. Stone, Harry Kalven, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The University of Chicago "In an attempt to avoid heated rhetoric ... Abner Greene's book ... offers a simple and straightforward explanation of key terms in the litigation process, as well as the statutory and constitutional provisions at issue. It offers no real commentary on whether any of the court decisions at any level were right or wrong. Instead, it leaves all analysis of the situation to the reader. The book is a good step-by-step discussion of this complicated litigation... worthwhile just for its clear and concise definitions of the terminology that all the election lawsuits produced." --Law and Politics Book Review