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Evaluating Constitutional Hardball: Two Fallacies And A Research Agenda, Joseph Fishkin, David E. Pozen
Evaluating Constitutional Hardball: Two Fallacies And A Research Agenda, Joseph Fishkin, David E. Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
This Reply addresses the responses by Professors David Bernstein and Jed Shugerman to our essay Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball. Bernstein's response, we argue, commits the common fallacy of equating reciprocity with symmetry: assuming that because constitutional hardball often "takes two" to play, both sides must be playing it in a similar manner. Shugerman's response, on the other hand, helps combat the common fallacy of equating aggressiveness with wrongfulness: assuming that because all acts of constitutional hardball strain norms of governance, all are similarly damaging to democracy. We suggest that whereas Bernstein's approach would set back the burgeoning effort to study constitutional …
A Computational Analysis Of Constitutional Polarization, David E. Pozen, Eric L. Talley, Julian Nyarko
A Computational Analysis Of Constitutional Polarization, David E. Pozen, Eric L. Talley, Julian Nyarko
Faculty Scholarship
This Article is the first to use computational methods to investigate the ideological and partisan structure of constitutional discourse outside the courts. We apply a range of machine-learning and text-analysis techniques to a newly available data set comprising all remarks made on the U.S. House and Senate floors from 1873 to 2016, as well as a collection of more recent newspaper editorials. Among other findings, we demonstrate (1) that constitutional discourse has grown increasingly polarized over the past four decades; (2) that polarization has grown faster in constitutional discourse than in nonconstitutional discourse; (3) that conservative-leaning speakers have driven this …