Digital Commons Network^™

Highly Original (Book Review), Gary L. Mcdowell

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Since his appointment to the United States Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, Justice Antonin Scalia has been (to borrow a felicitous phrase from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) a "brooding omnipresence" over the constitutional landscape, revered by conservatives and reviled by liberals This first Italian-American justice has electrified American constitutional law (and, thereby, American politics) by his firm and largely unfaltering commitment to the idea that the "original meaning" of the Constitution is the only legitimate basis for judicial decision. Any other approach, he insists, is nothing less than "a standing invitation to judicial arbitrariness and policy-driven …

English Calvinism And The Crowd: Coriolanus And The History Of Religious Reform, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Late Tudor London comes alive when Stephen Greenblatt's acclaimed biography of William Shakespeare, shadowing its subject, takes to the streets. “The unprecedented concentration of bodies jostling … crossing and recrossing the great bridge, pressing into taverns and theaters and churches,” Greenblatt suggests, is a “key to the whole spectacle” of crowds in the playwright's histories and tragedies. To be sure, his little excursions in London left their mark on his scripts, yet he scrupulously sifted his literary sources from which he drew characters and crises onto the stage. He prowled around Plutarch and read Stow and Hollinshed on the wars …

Barriers In The Land Of The Free, Gary L. Mcdowell

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The best way to get judges to write books is apparently to lure them to the lecterns of prominent lecture series, then turn their remarks into something more permanent. Perhaps the most successful of these schemes was Judge Benjamin Cardozo's 1921 Storrs lectures at the Yale Law School that appeared in the same year as The Nature of the Judicial Process . While a judge on the New York Court of Appeals, before he was elevated to the US Supreme Court in 1932, Cardozo saw two further series of lectures appear in print as The Growth of the Law (1924) …

Exploring Group Behavior, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

When I migrated from the world of constructions and took a position as a college professor and social psychologist, I found myself on the right side of the "good work if you can get it" divide. Granted, professoring is still work. There are politics of the office, bosses who make demands, and duties that must be fulfilled. Nor is it a glamorous occupation, as Hollywood's depictions of Indiana Jones-like professorial types would suggest. But depending on one's goals and perspectives, it is a personally fulfilling pursuit. It is an elite profession that requires special training and skill, and for much …

Causality, Change And Leadership, Gill Robinson Hickman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Conceptual perspective on leadership and change: in general essentialists maintain that social and natural realities exist apart from our perceptions of reality and that individuals perceive the world rather than construct it (Rosenblum and Travis 2003, p. 33). Conversely, constructionists believe that humans construct or create reality and give it meaning through social, economic and political interactions. Specifically, reality cannot be separated form the way people perceive it (Rosenblum and Travis 2003, p. 33). According to the constructionist view, therefore, people can change reality by changing their perceptions of it.

A Quest For A Grand Theory Of Leadership, J. Thomas Wren

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

What happens when a collection of scholars from differing disciplines comes together to create a grand theory of leadership? This is the question philosopher Joanne B. Ciulla came to identify as particularly intriguing as a group of academics assembled to attempt precisely that. Although the substantive challenges of creating a grand theory of leadership had always been the group's focus, it gradually dawned on the participants that how they were going about the task of coming together across disciplines to create an integrated product was as significant as what they were creating. Political scientist Georgia Sorenson noted that 'there is …

Effective Group Meetings And Decision Making, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Single individuals do much to advance the cause of peace, but much of the work - the decisions, advocacy, planning, and organizing - is handled by groups. In groups we pool our knowledge and abilities, give each other feedback, and tackle problems too overwhelming to face alone. Group members give us emotional and social support and can stimulate us to become more creative, insightful, and committed to our goals. When we work with others who share our values and goals, we often come to understand ourselves, and our objectives, more clearly.

Not every group, however, realizes these positive consequences. Often …

The "Actual State Of Things": Teaching About Law In Political And Historical Context, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Vine Deloria, Jr., the most prolific Native writer and one of the most gifted intellectuals in American history, left a deep imprint in many of the fields he so artfully plowed, including: education, religion, politics, cultural critic, history, and indigenous knowledge. His scholarship on specific subjects came in waves, with each wave building upon the previous one before reaching its remarkable crest.

Deloria's scholastic and pragmatic legacy in federal Indian law and policy and indigenous governance is one that has produced several major books and numerous articles, which, in the pantheon of Deloria's prodigious body of works, rank highly in …

Vine Deloria Jr. And Indigenous Americans, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Vine Deloria Jr., a Standing Rock Sioux citizen, widely considered the leading indigenous intellectual of the past century, walked on in November 2005. Deloria spent most of his adult life in an unrelenting, prodigious, and largely successful effort to provide those most grounded of Native individuals and their governments with the intellectual, theoretical, philosophical, and substantive arguments necessary to support their inherent personal and national sovereignty. Importantly, however, his voluminous work also sought to improve the nation-to-nation and intergovernmental relationships of and between First Nations, and between First Nations and non-Native governments at all levels. In fact, he was hailed …

Forging A Political, Educational, And Cultural Agenda For Indian Country: Common Sense Recommendations Gleaned From Deloria's Prose, David E. Wilkins

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Fortunately for the human species, in its wide assortment of pigmentations, cultural experiences, and geographic locations, each generation of a given people produces a small number of truly spirited individuals. These are individuals who not only possess the ability to constructively critique and analyze what is both sound and problematic in their society—or for our purposes, a set of societies—but who also have the rarer gift of being able to propound suggestions, ideas, and prognostications on what might be done to improve the human condition, both individually and collectively.

In the breadth and depth of Vine Deloria Jr.'s copious works …

The Common Law Of England In Virgina From 1776 To 1830, J. Thomas Wren

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The Virginia Court of Appeals embraced, on the whole, the English legal heritage, despite the violent separation from Great Britain in 1776. This loyalty to English precedents was an illustration of the conservative tenor of the Revolution in Virginia. The English common law continued to be revered because it was perceived to be a bulwark of English, and hence American, liberty. Adherence to English precedent also maintained stable rules of law, which in turn protected existing property rights. At the same time, however, the Court of Appeals was not slavishly devoted to the common law, and the court's departures from …

Contemplating Context, J. Thomas Wren, Elizabeth Faier

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In the following dialogue, historian J. Thomas Wren and anthropologist Elizabeth Faier, both original members of the General Theory of Leadership group convened in 2001, embark on a journey to 'contemplate context' within a general theory of leadership. As discussed in Chapter 1 of this volume, initial discussions within the general theory group exposed rather deep rifts concerning the importance and role of context in the leadership relation. These early debates inspired Wren and Faier to sit down and reflect more thoroughly on the troubling issues of the role of context. As the ensuing exchange makes clear, the two have …