On September 13, Law Professor Erwin Chemerinsky filed this amicus brief in the California Supreme Court in Patterson v Padilla, the lawsuit over whether the California Constitution prohibits keeping candidates off the presidential primary ballot if they don’t reveal their tax returns.

The main thrust of the amicus is that the California legislature can do almost anything it wants when it writes election laws. The brief does not grapple with the meaning of the word “recognized”. The California Constitution says all “recognized” candidates will be put on a presidential primary ballot (if they are seeking the nomination of a political party that is ballot-qualified). Chemerinsky implies that the legislature has the power to define the word “recognized”.

The amicus repeats the misinformation that all presidential candidates since Nixon have revealed their tax returns, ignoring the point in yesterday’s De La Fuente brief in federal court that minor party presidential candidates have almost never done that.

On September 12, Rocky De La Fuente filed this response brief in the combined federal cases challenging the California tax returns-ballot law. Even if you don’t normally read briefs, consider reading this one, because it has some interesting concepts that have not been raised by other briefs. At the end of the brief, De La Fuente points out that the oft-repeated claim that all presidential candidates nowadays reveal their tax returns is not true. He points out that in 2016, the only minor party presidential candidate who revealed her tax returns was Jill Stein (Green Party nominee), and she only released one year’s worth of returns.

On August 31, Earl C. Ravenal died. He was an expert on foreign policy and had sought the Libertarian Party presidential nomination for 1984. On the fourth ballot, he lost by one vote to David Bergland. Ravenal was 88 and lived in Rhode Island, although he had second home in Maryland, and he died there. See this obituary. Thanks to Andy Craig for the link.