Law Commons^™

Eloquence And Reason: Creating A First Amendment Culture, Robert L. Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This book presents a general theory to explain how the words in the Constitution become culturally salient ideas, inscribed in the habits and outlooks of ordinary Americans. "Eloquence and Reason" employs the First Amendment as a case study to illustrate that liberty is achieved through the formation of a common language and a set of organizing beliefs. The book explicates the structure of First Amendment language as a distinctive discourse and illustrates how activists, lawyers, and even presidents help to sustain our First Amendment belief system. When significant changes to constitutional law occur, they are best understood as the results …

Straight From The Mouth Of The Volcano: The Lowdown On Law, Language, And Latin@S, Ȧngel R. Oquendo

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: Latinos and Latinas at the Epicenter of Contemporary Legal Discourses. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, March 2007.

A Darwinist View Of The Living Constitution, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

The metaphor of a “living" Constitution imports terms from biology into law and, in the process, relies on biology for its meaning. A proper understanding of biology is therefore central to understanding living constitutionalism. Yet despite its rampant use by both opponents and proponents of living constitutionalism, and despite the current fervent debate over whether biology can be useful to the law, no one has evaluated the metaphor from a biological perspective.

This Essay begins that inquiry in an interdisciplinary study of law, science, and philology. The Essay first evaluates the metaphor as it is currently used and concludes that …

Audacity: Seeing Is Believing, Robert A. Eckhart

Robert A. Eckhart

Audacity is a powerful--and free--software which is very useful for teaching pronunciation, because it allows student to actually see their speech. Instead of using their ears to recognize distinctions in speech patterns, they use their eyes.

Facebook: What The Heck Is It And Why Should I Care?, Robert A. Eckhart

Robert A. Eckhart

A simple explanation of the educational purposes of Facebook, especially as compared to using blogs from other providers/websites in class.