[EM] RE : Any other way to access Ernst's paper?

[Joseph Malkevitch]

Dear Kevin,

I agree with your analysis. The Supreme Court as a general rule  
prefers to give Congress considerable freedom in its actions unless  
it sees egregious violations of constitutional principles.

However, what interested me about what happened before the Court on  
this occasion was the case for the "government" was prepared by  
someone who is a professional mathematician with a background in  
statistics with no prior, to the best of my knowledge, work on  
apportionment problems. Ernst seems to have taken a look at this  
situation with an open mind for the purpose of being able argue that  
"expert testimony" was not providing an "open and shut" case in being  
able to argue that Webster was a "better" method than Huntington- 
Hill. I have not looked at the actual Court opinion in several years  
but it is my memory that there was footnote which suggested that that  
in light of what Ernst and the government argued it did not appear  
that the case for Webster was open and shut and, thus, indeed,  
Congress had the right to choose, as the opinion explained, something  
that met reasonable standards of "fairness."

Regards,

Joe




On Dec 13, 2006, at 3:57 PM, Kevin Venzke wrote:

> Hi,
>
> --- MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp at hotmail.com> a écrit :
>>    I haven't succeeded in downloading Ernst's  paper with its
>> justification
>> of Huntington-Hill. Is there any other way to gain find it on the
>> Internet?
>>
>>   Joe, could you briefly summarize the argument for Hill vs Webster?
>>
>> Could it be that Ernst was only comparing Hill to the methods that  
>> were
>> being advocated in that court case, without showing that Hill was  
>> as good
>> as
>> Webster?
>
> When I read this paper I got the impression that Massachusetts (who
> sued advocating Webster) failed to convince the district court that  
> Hill
> was biased, and failed to argue why what Webster optimizes is more
> fair or more in line with the Constitution than what Hill optimizes.
> (It seems that the real life evidence Massachusetts used to argue that
> Hill is biased could be undermined by making different assumptions.)
>
> I don't get the impression from this paper that Ernst, the Supreme  
> Court,
> or the district court in the Massachusetts case considered "equal
> proportions" to be "better" than "major fractions" (or vice versa).  
> The
> courts only seem to hold that "EP" is acceptable according to the  
> wording
> of the Constitution, and that Congress is within its rights to  
> adopt it.
>
> Kevin Venzke
>
>
> 	
>
> 	
> 		
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------------------------------------------------
Joseph Malkevitch
Department of Mathematics
York College (CUNY)
Jamaica, New York 11451

Phone: 718-262-2551 (Voicemail available)

My new email is:

malkevitch at york.cuny.edu

web page:

http://www.york.cuny.edu/~malk



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