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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
How Civility Works, Keith Bybee
How Civility Works, Keith Bybee
Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University
Is civility dead? Americans ask this question every election season, but their concern is hardly limited to political campaigns. Doubts about civility regularly arise in just about every aspect of American public life. Rudeness runs rampant. Our news media is saturated with aggressive bluster and vitriol. Our digital platforms teem with expressions of disrespect and trolls. Reflecting these conditions, surveys show that a significant majority of Americans believe we are living in an age of unusual anger and discord. Everywhere we look, there seems to be conflict and hostility, with shared respect and consideration nowhere to be found. In a …
Open Secret: Why The Supreme Court Has Nothing To Fear From The Internet, Keith J. Bybee
Open Secret: Why The Supreme Court Has Nothing To Fear From The Internet, Keith J. Bybee
Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University
The United States Supreme Court has an uneasy relationship with openness: it complies with some calls for transparency, drags its feet in response to others, and sometimes simply refuses to go along. I argue that the Court’s position is understandable given that the internet age of fluid information and openness has often been heralded in terms that are antithetical to the Court’s operations. Even so, I also argue the Court actually has little to fear from greater transparency. The understanding of the Court with the greatest delegitimizing potential is the understanding that the justices render decisions on the basis of …