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The One Religious Question That Amy Coney Barrett Shouldn’T Have To Answer, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Eight Months Later, Ellen D. Katz

Reviews

Rick Hasen’s Election Meltdown provides a concise and scathing analysis of what ails the American electoral process. Rick identifies four “principal dangers”—namely, voter suppression, “pockets of incompetence” in election administration, “dirty tricks,” and “incendiary rhetoric” about stolen or rigged elections. He argues that these dangers have contributed to past dysfunctional elections and are sure to infect future ones. Election Meltdown closes with some proposals to temper the identified dangers so as to make voting less difficult and restore confidence in the electoral process.

October 3, 2020: It Is Fitting That President Trump Contracted The Virus, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “It Is Fitting that President Trump Contracted the Virus“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Cosmic City - Cosmic Teleology: A Reading Of Metaphysics Λ 10 And Politics I 2, Brandon Henrigillis

Dissertations (1934 -)

The goal of my project is to provide a reading of Metaphysics Λ 10. Λ 10 states that there is an order in the cosmos, or a cosmic nature. The problem for the interpreter of Aristotle is how to make sense of this claim given Aristotle’s arguments elsewhere regarding nature/substance and the priority of substances over the parts of a substance. To explain what Aristotle means when he states that there is a cosmic nature and arrangement, I first examine the army and household analogies offered by Aristotle in Λ 10. I contend that the household analogy in particular provides …

"The Most Glorious War Recorded In The British Annals”: Portugal In British Figurations Of The Peninsular War, Manuela MourãO

English Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

“THE MOST GLORIOUS WAR RECORDED IN THE BRITISH ANNALS,” AS ROBERT Southey described it in the dedication of his History of the Peninsular War,1 the conflict that brought together Portugal, Spain, and Britain against Napoleon’s armies between 1807 and 1814 was a dominant preoccupation of the British public in general, and of the first generation of Romantics in particular.2 Many critics have shown the extent to which the Iberian uprising against the tyranny of Napoleon galvanized the British people, united the British nation, and afforded Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge a renewed opportunity to sympathize with the cause of …

Mcconnell’S Lust To Control The Supreme Court Could Destroy It, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

September 22, 2020: Today's Column On The Confirmation Fight, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Today's Column on the Confirmation Fight“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Matthew Steilen, The Place Of Norms In Separating Power, Matthew Steilen

Baldy Center Blog

One of the chief intellectual discoveries of the past four years has been the degree to which government rests on norms: on a shared sense of the proper way to go about the business of government. This is unsurprising for followers of the law and society movement, with which the Baldy Center is so closely associated. From the beginning, scholars of law and society have demonstrated the limits of formalism in explaining how the law actually works. One can think of the Trump presidency as finally demonstrating for the wider world of legal scholars, the essential role of shared understandings, …

Political Tribalism Is Trumping Accountability. That’S Bad For Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

Justice, Ideology, And Struggle, Megan Murray

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Marx’s approach to questions of justice and morality are captured by this metaphilosophical position, whereby Marx rejects an understanding of philosophical inquiry as the pursuit of foundations and universality. Philosophical justifications are, in the last instance, products of a particular form of society and production. Rather than abandoning the basic idea of human moral equality, the radical historicist approach allows the philosopher to make the Marxist progression from merely understanding the world toward changing it and moving it closer toward a moral horizon.

Author information: Megan graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2018 started a PhD in political theory at …

Alexander Hamilton’S Vision Of An American Monarchy, Madeline Clarke

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Alexander Hamilton’s underlying arguments in The Federalist Papers and the Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794 expand the power of the presidency and display Hamilton’s desire for a king-like president of the United States, much like Great Britain’s monarch.

Author information: Madeline Clarke is an honors student from Ashland, Missouri, at the University of Missouri-Columbia studying political science and geography with a minor in American Constitutional Democracy. She is currently a Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy Undergraduate Fellow in addition to serving as president of Gamma Theta Upsilon Geography Honor Society, an executive board member of Pi Sigma Alpha Political Science Honor …

Hiding Behind Lincoln, Jonathan Fenster

Compass: An Undergraduate Journal of American Political Ideas

Abraham Lincoln’s ascent to power was surprising, but after a deep analysis it is clear that it was not at all unique. Just like Queen Esther, Lincoln was able to overcome extreme odds through patience and faith.

Author information: Jonathan Fenster is a Straus Center Scholar at Yeshiva University located in Washington Heights, New York. Jonathan plans on attending law school after he completes his biology major, and hopes to cultivate and develop a deeper understanding of the synthesis between modern law and ancient philosophy.

Why Have Candidates In Indonesian Elections Increasingly Been Rallying Ethnic And Religious Support?, Colm A. Fox

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Ethnicity and religion often become politicised in elections. Research has found that this is particularly true during a transition to democracy. During these times, fragile democratic rules and practices, coupled with strong ethnic bonds, often motivate aspiring politicians to bolster their support by appealing to voters’ emotional allegiances to their tribe, ethnicity, or religion. But, Indonesia’s case is puzzling.

Here’S Everything Libertarians Like Russ Diamond Get Wrong About Mask-Wearing, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

August 25, 2020: The Case For Trump, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Case for Trump“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

From Political Theology To Critical Political Ethics, Hille Haker

Theology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Building upon the tradition of the New Political Theology and Iiberation, decolonial, and feminist theology, this article explores the consequences of a decolonial epistemology of theology for ethical theory. It introduces a critical political ethics that concurs with critical, post-structural, and decolonial theory that knowledge and ethics is necessarily situated while standing firm in their ethical orientation towards liberation from injustice. In all these approaches, the question of freedom is of central importance for the development of political ethics, and political theology as well as critical theory raise the question of authority. Rather than presupposing the liberal concept of autonomy …

On Staying Open While Seeing Red: Predicting Open-Mindedness And Affect In Politics, Emily Hanson

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines whether people who claim to be dispositionally open-minded, do in fact, demonstrate such open-mindedness when they are actually presented with political opinions that run counter to their own. In Study 1, participants rated their partisan identity and dispositional open-mindedness prior to reacting to a series of fictional Facebook posts that varied in both their political ideology and political extremity. The results of this study demonstrated that the most consistent predictor of �open� reactions (operationalized in terms of both cognitive judgements and affective reactions) to each type of Facebook post was whether it was congruent with the participants� …

N.Y.’S James Is Right To Go After The Nra For Fraud And Malfeasance. Seeking To Dissolve It Is A Step Too Far., Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

August 7, 2020: Latitia James's Tyranny, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “ Latitia James's Tyranny“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

August 5, 2020: The Power Of Prayer, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Power of Prayer“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Authority And The Globalisation Of Inclusion And Exclusion: Author Meets Readers, Hand Lindahl, Christine Bell Prof, Friedrich Kratochwil, Hans-W. Micklitz, Carlos Thiebaut, Bert Van Roermund

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Authority is written against the background of intense resistance to globalization processes by a range of political movements and grassroots organizations. These processes are complex and have a variety of dimensions. One of these is the emergence of global legal orders, which I define, in a rough and ready manner, as relatively autonomous legal orders that claim or aspire to claim global validity for themselves. They too-most obviously the World Trade Organization (WTO)-are the butt of resistance. Whatever its forms and aspirations, resistance to globalization is fueled by their peculiar dynamic. Indeed, emergent global legal orders spawn massive exclusion when …

Potty Politics: Investigating The Policymaking Processes Of Sanitation Service To The Urban Poor In Delhi, Tanushree Bhan

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates why sanitation outcomes vary across urban poor communities in Delhi, India. Unequal access to quality sanitation has serious implications for the health, dignity, and economic well-being of the poor and public health in general due to risks of environmental contamination. For this multiple-case study, a sample of 15 communities is drawn from slums, public housing, homeless shelters, and the streets. The database comprises of direct observations of sanitation outcomes in these communities, interviews with 95 key policy informants, official documents of relevant government agencies, newspaper articles, and a perception-of-the-poor survey of 30 sanitation bureaucrats. Thematic analysis of …

In Harrisburg And D.C., The Gop Meddling With Our Courts Is A Threat To Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

July 26, 2020: No Federal Police Power, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “No Federal Police Power“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

July 19, 2020: Trump Threatens University Tax Exempt Status, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Trump Threatens University Tax Exempt Status“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

If We’Re Serious About Protecting Religious Liberty, We Need Universal Healthcare, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

July 14, 2020: The Fantasyland Of American Public Discourse, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “The Fantasyland of American Public Discourse“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

Are We Witnessing The Death Of Reason And Truth In American Public Life?, Bruce Ledewitz

Newspaper Columns

Collected biweekly contributions to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site.

July 1, 2020: Originalism Is Dead, Bruce Ledewitz

Hallowed Secularism

Blog post, “Originalism Is Dead“ discusses politics, theology and the law in relation to religion and public life in the democratic United States of America.

A Historiography Of Populism And Neopopulism In Latin America, Michael Conniff

Faculty Publications, History

For over a half century, Latin American and other scholars have written reams and held innumerable conferences about the populist style of politics in the region. Historians quickly joined in with their theories, methods, and perspectives. Most literature focused on the classic period from the 1930s-1970s, when populism dominated many nations’ governments. In the 1980s and 1990s, as the region rebounded from military dictatorship, new leaders using populist methods won office and instituted economic policies in line with neoliberalism. This reappearance, called neopopulism, sparked new interest in the subject. Finally, after 2000 numerous left-leaning politicians gave rise to a radical …