American Politics Commons^™

Secession And Federalism In The United States: Tools For Managing Regional Conflict In A Pluralist Society, Erin Ryan

Erin Ryan

“God Is Near": American Theocracy And The Political Theology Of Joseph Smith, Alan P. Koenig

All Graduate Works by Year: Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Mormon prophet Joseph Smith established the quintessentially “American religion” according to religious critics like Harold Bloom, perhaps the last major religion to emerge in the Western world. Founded during the rise of Jacksonian Democracy, early Mormonism espoused many populist and egalitarian tenets, yet behind Smith’s theology of an ever more exalted path to individual godhood lay an extraordinary politics demanding a new, theocratic hierarchy. This dissertation will discuss how Smith’s apocalypticism and exceptional politics of continual revelation confronted a pluralistic Protestant society with the superseding aim of creating a uniquely American kingdom. As a political theorist, Smith ...

Normalization Policies With Cuba: Implications For Political And Economic Reform, Ramona N. Khan

All Graduate Works by Year: Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For longer than the past half century, the relationship between the United States and Cuba has been one of antagonism, mistrust, betrayal, hostility and defiance. Decades of mutual hostility arising from Cuba’s post revolution adoption of an economic system that emulated that of the Soviet Union, along with the long history of U.S. interference in Cuba’s domestic and international affairs that predated the Castro revolution and continued afterward, have resulted in this rancorous relationship. Cuba’s move to communism shortly after the Castro regime came to power was regarded as a threat to both democracy and capitalism ...

A Fractured Party, John M. Rudy

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The Republican party was fractured and in tatters. Warring factions could barely decide the most important issues of the day, let along rally around a candidate. A decade of fractious politics within the party left no true power brokers. The former Republican president was less than enthusiastic about the tickets his party fielded. America was faced with deciding between two candidates plagued by scandal. And a man from Adams County was not above trying to stir up even more trouble. [excerpt]

My Turn: 'We The People' And The Garland Nomination, John M. Greabe

Legal Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Because I teach constitutional law, a friend recently asked me whether Judge Merrick Garland or President Obama might successfully sue to compel the Senate to take action on the nomination of Judge Garland to fill the vacancy on the United States Supreme Court.

Almost certainly not, I told him. Under settled precedent, a judge would dismiss such a case as raising a non-legal ''political" question. It would be very difficult to develop acceptable decisional standards for such a claim. Moreover, courts are reluctant to entertain lawsuits challenging mechanisms that the Senate uses to oversee the judiciary."

2016 Primary Election And Caucus Data, Carrie M. Pirmann, Emily Sherwood, Emily Tevebaugh

Election Data

The data contained in this dataset cover the 2016 Presidential Primary and Caucus election season. Results are reported for Democratic and Republican candidates only. Data were sourced from finalized (certified) state election board results wherever possible. All data is reported at the county level unless otherwise noted. Refer to the 2016 Primary Election Data Sources document for a full list of data sources.

Results for Alaska, Colorado (Democratic only), Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington state are for these states caucuses. The vote totals reported are raw numbers of votes.

Data for North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming is not included ...

Rethinking Critical Mass In The Federal Appellate Courts., Laura Moyer

Laura Moyer

This article draws from critical mass studies of gender in other political institutions to inform an application to the US Courts of Appeals. The results demonstrate the utility of considering court-level aspects of diversity. As mixed-sex panels become more common within a circuit, both male and female judges increasingly support plaintiffs in civil rights claims, though the magnitude of the effect is larger for women. The presence of a female chief judge is also positively associated with pro-plaintiff decisions by men and women in sex discrimination cases.

The Role Of Case Complexity In Judicial Decision Making., Laura P. Moyer

Laura Moyer

The literature on ideology and decision making offers conflicting expectations about how judges’ ideology should affect their votes in cases that raise many legal issues. Using cases from the U.S. Courts of Appeals, I examine the strength of ideology as a predictor of sincere voting in single and multi-issue cases and test whether the same effect for ideology can be seen for liberal and conservative judges. For all judges, ideology yields a larger effect as the number of issues increases; however, conservative judges are much more likely than liberal judges to cast sincere votes at all levels of complexity.

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 ...

The Role, Accomplishments, And Challenges Of The Congressional Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust, Ron E. Armstead

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

In 1971, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) began its seminal investigation of racism in the military. A year into the investigation, the caucus reported the military had done little, if anything, to address racism in the ranks (188 Cong. Rec., 6739-6744, 1972). The problem continued as one of the most critical issues for the CBC during the latter years of the Vietnam War (188 Cong. Rec. pp. E8674-8688).

Concurrently, in 1971, the CBC held its first annual dinner, which some 500 people attended, including the late actor Ozzie Davis. Over the years, this dinner has grown into a five-day legislative ...

America’S Legendary Ignorance About Africa Persists, Julius A. Amin

History Faculty Publications

In an increasingly interconnected and technological global environment, ignorance of Africa is no longer acceptable. This, especially from major political leaders. Yet, examples of such ignorance are evident in the current American presidential campaign. Neither the Republican nominee Donald J. Trump nor the democratic nominee Hillary R. Clinton has articulated any concrete vision for an African policy.

How Civility Works.Pdf, Keith J. Bybee

Keith J. Bybee

What Goes Up Must Not Come Down: The Tweet Retraction Process Of Politicians, Paige Settles

Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In 2011, Congressman Anthony Weiner demonstrated the risks politicians face when utilizing Twitter. While past scholarship regarding Twitter has focused on the impact of the tweets candidates share with their voters, academic attention has not been afforded to the tweets candidates delete. This thesis seeks to delve further into the analysis of Twitter as a political campaign tool by examining the practice of tweet retraction. To achieve this end, this research presents two studies. The first analyzes the deleted tweets of members of the 112th Congress between May and November of 2012 in terms of quantity of retractions and the ...

Voter Turnout In A Low Interest, Off-Year Election: A Field Experiment, Zachary Miller

Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This thesis is an analysis on the effects of a low cost get out the vote (GOTV) effort through direct mail on a low interest, off year election. By conducting a field experiment divided into two stages, this project measures the effects of direct mail contact on voter turnout in the state of Kentucky. Postcards were sent during the final week of both the 2015 primary and general elections. The expectation is that those who received a postcard will be more likely to vote than non-recipients. Using data provided by the Kentucky Board of Elections, a data set was created ...

Menefee, Richard Hickman, 1809-1841 (Sc 3052), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3052. Letter, 16 December 1837, of Congressman Richard Hickman Menefee to attorney W. Rochester Beatty, Greenupsburg, Kentucky. Writing from Washington, D.C., Menefee asks Beatty to assume conduct of a lawsuit for a client in Salvisa, Kentucky. Referring perhaps to the Rebellions of 1837 in Upper and Lower Canada, he also declares the administration of President Martin Van Buren to be “astounded by the events of last month” and predicts its presentation of measures to the new session of Congress “timidly and irresolutely” in the face of strong opposition.

Election Districts - Warren County, Kentucky (Sc 3050), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3050. Class action complaint filed by five voters in U.S. District Court, Bowling Green, Kentucky, alleging malapportionment of election districts. The complaint seeks declarative and injunctive relief against the current apportionment and against holding a primary election for justices of the peace and constables. Details of the previous and current apportionments are included.

The Limits Of Liberal Planning: The Lindsay Administration's Failed Plan To Control Development On Staten Island, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Faculty Publications and Research

Staten Island grew rapidly after the Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened in 1964. Mayor John Lindsay introduced a plan to control and guide development there, and encouraged planned unit development. The Rouse Company, then building Columbia, Maryland, was contracted to plan new communities for the southern third of Staten Island to more than double the borough’s population. State Senator John Marchi introduced legislation for the South Richmond Development Corporation in 1971. The plan called for the city to use eminent domain to buy property and transfer it to the Rouse Company, which would also construct residential towers on landfill in ...

How Do Corporations Play Politics? The Fedex Story, Jill E. Fisch

Jill Fisch

No abstract provided.

Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

The program of regulation through private litigation that Democratic Congresses purposefully created starting in the late 1960s soon met opposition emanating primarily from the Republican party. In the long campaign for retrenchment that began in the Reagan administration, consequential reform proved difficult and ultimately failed in Congress. Litigation reformers turned to the courts and, in marked contrast to their legislative failure, were well-rewarded, achieving growing rates of voting support from an increasingly conservative Supreme Court on issues curtailing private enforcement under individual statutes. We also demonstrate that the judiciary’s control of procedure has been central to the campaign to ...

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Sean Farhang

In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for ...