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Your article reminded me of how Robert Caro outlined the legal strategy employed by Abe Fortas during Lyndon Johnson’s 1948 Senate campaign. As far as the Court’s role came into play, Fortas knew that Texas fell under the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction, and that Justice Hugo Black had oversight of its cases. Once the issue of an election, a state affair, and one already certified (a-hem) by the Texas Democratic party (by one vote), came before Justice Black, Mr. Fortas gambled that he would stop the lower district court’s permission to allow, in practical terms, the examination of voting roles in Alice.

If any of these machinations seem to have national parallels some 52 years later, I would not deny that such thoughts have crossed my mind as well.

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