Election 2000 in Retrospect	Constitutional Law in a Sound Bite

“Who knew constitutional law was so hot?” quipped Professor Kim Lane Scheppele as she bounded out of Silverman Hall on her way to another interview with the press.

During the maelstrom that followed Election Day 2000, Penn Law’s core faculty of constitutional experts was called on not only by befuddled media correspondents but by the Law School community too.

While the presidential election remained suspended in surreality during the first week after the elections, Dean Michael A. Fitts assembled a Faculty Forum on the Election to parse Florida statutes and constitutional law before an overflowing audience of law faculty and students.

Moderated by Dean Fitts, the panel comprised Penn Law faculty members Frank Goodman, Kim Lane Scheppele, Seth Kreimer, Jacques deLisle, and Visiting Professor Ed Hartnett of Seton Hall Law School. Together they defined and bandied phrases we have all heard to the point of exhaustion: butterfly ballots, pregnant chads, dimpled chads, hand counts.

One professor paged searchingly through a yellowed, dog-eared, paperback copy of “The Federalist Papers.” Another sorted through a stack of jurisdictional statutes hot-off-the-Internet that afternoon.

“I think the idea of the missing ballot boxes will be like Elvis sightings for the next few years,” commented Dean Fitts. “Many will claim to have seen them.”

Let’s face it: this was the Super Bowl for constitutional scholars complete with mchair quarterbacks like Tim Russert - “if this happens, then this might happen – or not.” The broadcast program Nightline nearly became the Psychic Friends Network with academic experts explaining the day’s facts and predicting the next day’s endgame. The fevered pitch among constitutional and legal scholars only heightened. Until suddenly, late at night on December 12th, it was all over.