Article:
Ronald D. Rotunda, Constitutional and Statutory Restrictions on Political Parties in the Wake of Cousins v. Wigoda, 53 Texas L. Rev. 935 (1975).
 

Abstract:
Cousins v. Wigoda, arising out of a 1972 credentials challenge to Mayor Daley’s Illinois delegation at the Democratic National Convention, foreshadows the Supreme Court’s stance on the complex issues surrounding a credentials contest, which is a vehicle for challenging the seating of delegates to nominating conventions. In response to the unseating of Mayor Daley and his loyalists by the convention’s Credentials Committee, the Court held that the national interest in selecting candidates for national office and the party members’ freedom of association overcame an admitted state interest in the integrity of its election process; thus party rules on delegate selection might legitimately disqualify delegates selected according to state law. Arguably, Cousins may be read to urge, if not require, courts and legislatures to stay out of the national nominating convention process at any stage. In context, however, Cousins offers a carefully circumscribed holding: party rules should control prenomination activities, and the legislature and courts should abstain from interference (a) if there is no claim that the party acted unconstitutionally; or (b) if a state statute conflicting with the party rule is an extraterritorial extension of the state’s jurisdiction and if the state has no special interest justifying the burden its extraterritorial statute places on the national party. In all other cases state regulation and judicial review have a place.

The major issue that arises in determining the content of judicial review of the presidential prenomination process is the functional reach of intervention—the standards to be applied in placing constitutional limitations on a political party and in protecting the party from unduly restrictive state legislation. Ancillary to the determination of functional standards are two preliminary jurisdictional inquires affecting the scope of judicial review—whether state action exists or is even a necessary prerequisite to judicial review, and whether the political question doctrine conclusively militates against judicial intervention. Cousins seemingly established a simple standard of review and offered no opinion on the jurisdictional issues; yet when considered in light of surrounding case law, the opinion intimates a complex constitutional balancing of interests and serves to suggest the future parameters of the judicial questions.