Legal News

Franken-Coleman Battle Hits Minnesota High Court

By Ashby Jones

We could have big rulings handed down from the U.S. Supreme Court today. But unless and until that happens, our eyes will mostly be on the Minnesota Supreme Court, which this morning will hear arguments in the Al Franken/Norm Coleman recount case. The issue: whether problems with absentee ballots justify reversing a lower-court ruling declaring Al Franken the winner of the 2008 Senate election — by a mere 312 votes. Click here for the Minnesota Star-Tribune story; here for the WSJ story; here for the NYT story; here for video coverage of the hearing from the Star-Trib, starting at 10 a.m. EDT.

The court is likely to issue a decision within weeks, possibly handing Democrats a 60-vote majority in the Senate, enough to override any Republican attempts to delay legislation through filibusters.

“It’s a real countdown for this national drama,” Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist, told the WSJ. “So much is riding on it — President Obama’s efforts on health, energy, education, the stimulus.”

Most analysts, even those with Republican sympathies, expect the court to decide in Franken’s favor, as the Democrat has won nearly every state legal ruling to date. If it does, Coleman — who was the incumbent senator until January — could still appeal to the federal courts.

Loyola Law professor and election-law expert Rick Hasen, in an LA Times editorial out today, opines that if the Minnesota court rejects Coleman’s arguments, the U.S. Senate should provisionally seat Franken, even if Coleman presses his appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).