Election Law and the 2024 Presidential Contest

This November’s race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is expected to go down to the wire. But ahead of, on, and after Election Day, both campaigns and parties at the local, national, and state level will be ready to fight not just at the ballot box, but in the courtroom. From when mail-in ballots can be counted to the final Electoral College tally, state and federal election laws will play a major role in the outcome of this election. 

What can we expect heading into this contest, and how can legal academics and law students play a role? In this episode, Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky talks with two election law experts: Richard Hasen, the Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law at the UCLA School of Law, and Berkeley Law Professor Emily Rong Zhang. 

Hasen is the director of UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project and an internationally recognized expert in election law. He’s the co-author of leading casebooks in election law and remedies, the co-founder of the peer-reviewed Election Law Journal, and was an election law analyst for CNN in 2020 and for NBC News and MSNBC in 2022.

Zhang studies how the law can promote political participation and representation, especially of individuals from historically disadvantaged communities. Before she joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2022, she was a Skadden Fellow at the ACLU Voting Rights Project.

Read more about the recent developments in the Pennsylvania case they discuss in this episode. 

About:

More Just from Berkeley Law is a podcast about how law schools can and must play a role in solving society’s most difficult problems. 

The rule of law — and the role of the law — has never been more important. In these difficult times, law schools can, and must, play an active role in finding solutions. But how? Each episode of More Just starts with a problem, then explores potential solutions, featuring Dean Erwin Chemerinsky as well as other deans, professors, students, and advocates, about how they’re making law schools matter.

Have a question about teaching or studying law, or a topic you’d like Dean Chemerinsky to explore? Email us at morejust@berkeley.edu and tell us what’s on your mind.

Production by Yellow Armadillo Studios. 

Please visit the episode page for a full transcript.

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