Customer Reviews

The Votes That Counted: How the Court Decided the 2000 Presidential Election

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A definitive, even handed analysis of the judges and the court decisions arising out of the Florida disputed election. While Gillman devotes specific chapters to each of the two Florida Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court decisions, he does not ignore the lower court decisions in these case or the litigation on other challenges to the election outcome. Gillman is ultimately critical of the US Supreme Court decision, but he provides equal time to the Court's defenders and his criticism is both scholarly and dispassionate. Unlike other critics of the Court, including this reviewer, who think the Court did irreparable damage to itself and its reputations, Gillman concludes, and provides evidence to support his conclusion, that the decision has not and will not undercut the public's reverence for the Court's as the Nation's most trusted and respected institution.

In this book, The Votes that Counted, Howard Gillman does a masterful job of reporting the facts that led up to the dispute, and the chronology of events during the aftermath of the Presidential Election in November, 2000.

Naturally, Gillman focuses on Florida, which was the state of most interest in the election, since its electoral votes would ultimately determine who would reside in the White House.

Gillman is, in my opinion, biased, with an evident fondness of the Democratic Party. There is, of course, nothing wrong with being opiniated, and Gillman does not let this interfere with his reporting of the evident facts.

Gillman's analysis of the election and the subsequent judicial participation is a good one, and certainly does correlate well with the title of the book; he explains well why he feels that the justices of the Supreme Court (all five of them that sided with Bush) determined who the next President of the United States would be.

As I was reading this book, I frequently found that I had to stop and re-read some sentences multiple times in order to understand the meaning; verbs were conjugated improperly, and improper tenses were used. I do not fault the author for these grammatical errors - I fault the editor for failing to catch and correct them.

I found this to be a valuable book, and one worthy of studying carefully as study of the Presidental election of 2000 and judicial intervention in that contest. I gave it four stars rather than five because of what I see as a lack of strong editing.

This book is careful, thoughtful, wonderfully written and, as compared with some other works on the topic, is non-polemical. A must-read for anyone interested in the 2000 election controversy or anyone with an interest in the role of the courts in our system of government.

the outcome of 2000 election and how America got there. The book chronologically relives the legal battles in courts by pro-Bush and pro-Gore forcs culminating with a 5-4 Supreme Court rulings overturning Florida's Supreme Court. Well written and well researched. If after reading the book you are still sincerely convinced that Bush v. Gore (I) and (II) were legally sound decisions, I would recommend another book: "The Attitudial Model (Revised)" by Segal and Spaeth.

I first ran into this book at my college library and renewed it twice so I could take my time enjoying it. A year later I bought it. I play on reading it again on Spring Break.

Placing the reader inside the legal system so soon after the decision, the author was able to capture the feelings of the justices and judges while the emotions were still in the air.

The only major downfall of this book is the lack of logic expressed by the author several times to support his views. However, in any book in which the author admits a bias, I am inclined to assume there will be a slant to support his view when I read it.

I feel this book is so good, I still give it 5 stars.

Otherwise reviewed as 'evenhanded', I can only conclude that the reviewer shares the authors bias. The author doesn't hide this, setting out to prove that while most judges involved in the 2000 election behaved fairly, the five Supreme Court justices who ultimately decided the election did not.
Gillman describes the chronology succinctly, and in an engaging way. His tracing of the legal complexities is accessable to non-lawyers, without getting bogged down in cases and precedents.
What made me want to keep shouting 'Objection!', though, was what seemed to be breakdowns in the authors logical style, when opinions would drop into otherwise factual recitation.
One example is the discussion of Jacobs v. Seminole County Canvassing Board, where he seems to be earnestly suggesting that the most appropriate application of equal protection would have been to disallow ~25,000 absentee ballots, despite the vast majority having been legally untainted in any way.

I enjoyed the book, but if you're looking for an even-handed application, look elsewhere.

The two stars are given for the acute factual account of the events and their proceedings of the election. And while the author does offer arguments to both sides of the debate (whether the final ruling by the supreme court was partisan or not), he often gives illegitimate reasons for dismissing the argument against partisanship while promoting his that is was a partisan decision. Case in point he dedicates 4 pages to the defense of the majority justices rulings (2 of which are dismissals of the argument) while giving some 25 pages to the opposing argument never offering any sound reasoning as to why it itself may be wrong. There are severe holes in many of his reasonings as he often contradicts himself. I was also astounded by the many grammatical errors and misprints, which is naturally to be blamed on the editor. Overall, the book provides a great summation of events, but the only real bias is that of the author's view, regardless of whether he is correct. Clearly this was a one-sided, unfair analysis of the debate with pitiful attempts to appear judicious and fair-sided in its logic.

The book is definitely biased, as the author admits. Some biased books are OK, but this one is really one-sided and employs such irrational discourse that you wonder how they accepted it as "academic." I think the topic was hot at the moment, and the publisher did not carefully read the whole thing. Also how can you explain that a professor committed so many grammatical errors, and the editor let them errors go? You thought that maybe they had real peer review and real editing before publishing. 'Guess a timely book can be published, even if it's biased and uses the style and grammar typically associated with writings of a struggling middle school student. All in all, this one's a mystery.