Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of Federalism On Immigration: A Reconstruction Of The System To Alleviate The Immigration Crisis In America, Theresa Lam

Senior Honors Theses

Illegal immigration is a complex and relevant issue in the United States. In particular, its long-term implications for American communities has elevated its significance. Within America’s federalist system, the immigration dilemma has raised tension among federal, state, and local governments, which have different perspectives on how to approach the matter. The federal government is responsible for enforcing immigration laws but delegates numerous immigration responsibilities to state and local law enforcement. However, the degree to which local officials should cooperate with federal authorities is the subject of intense debate. Should immigration enforcement be a federal or local responsibility? Under federalism and …

An Analysis Of The Abortion Fight's History, Facts, And Strategies In A Post-Roe V. Wade World, Jeremy Kang

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

Despite the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade - thereby giving states the freedom to regulate abortion as they saw fit - no significant decline in abortion numbers followed, raising the question: what is the right way to fight abortion?

One factor to be considered: how does the Constitution permit the different levels of government to tackle this topic? For half a century the Roe decision allowed the federal government to trump a state’s right to choose the level of abortion restrictions it deemed fit. Now the decision has been returned to the states. But which decision was …

Development Of The Right To Privacy In Montana Discourse And The Montana Constitution, Scott A. O'Donnell

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

The Threat To Academic & Intellectual Freedom, Christopher M. Jimenez, Melissa Del Castillo, Stephen Thomson Moore, Lowell Bryan Cooper, Jacqueline Radebaugh, George Pearson

Works of the FIU Libraries

The Academic and Intellectual Freedom Ad Hoc Committee presented a First Thursday discussion on May 4 about academic and intellectual freedom. Starting with a brief definition of these terms, they traced the history of Academic Freedom and how current events affect us at FIU. The committee posed several real-life scenarios threatening Academic/Intellectual Freedom in libraries. All library staff were invited to attend this lively discussion.

Term Limits: An Argument For The Senate, Deanna Ferry

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

In this research study an argument is made to impose term limits on Senators serving in the United States Congress. It looks to explore historical data to prove effectiveness of self-imposed limits, real time data of sitting Senators to offer a modern perspective, and examples from other imposed term limits for sitting elected officials to demonstrate their benefit to constituents. The data utilized in this study is applied through organizational theory and quantified based on results and responses from both primary and secondary sources. Historical sources are applied as well through the literature review focusing on three primary themes emerging …

The Charter’S Revolutionary Impact On Gay Rights In Canada, Ameer Idreis

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

The differing paces of gay rights progress around the globe, even between otherwise culturally and politically similar states, raises important questions regarding why this disparity occurs. Previous literature on the attainment of gay rights protections in Canada have highlighted the great impact had by the addition of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the Constitution Act, 1982. Additionally, comparative studies have argued that it is the entrenchment of the Charter which has made the crucial difference between the pace of gay rights in Canada as opposed to other states, such as Australia. This paper argues that, despite not having …

A Convention To Save America, Andrew Todd Looker, Jr.

Masters Theses

Article V of the United States Constitution articulates the methods for amending the Constitution. Amendments are formally recommended by either a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress or by a vote of two-thirds of the state legislatures. This latter method is known as a Convention of States. Despite its inclusion in Article V, no amendment has yet been proposed for ratification by such a convention. This research aims to explain the history of Article V, the process for an Article V Convention, the current efforts to call such a convention, and amendments that should be considered at this convention. …

Bent, But Not Broken: The Constitutional, Legal, And Procedural Issues In The 2020 Electoral College Vote Certification, Nicholas Kapoor

eJournal of Public Affairs

In 2016, Democrats protested in Trump-won states asking Electoral College members to vote their conscience and against their state’s popular vote. In 2020, President Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6^th demanding that the certification of the Electoral College vote in favor of Joe Biden not move forward. Are the laws, court decisions, and the Constitution itself set up to cause such an uproar around a routine item? Was the 2020 iteration of counting the Electoral College votes an aberration, or is this the new normal? This essay will chronicle the Constitutional, legal, and procedural issues around the …

The Pardon Paradigm: The Presidential Pardons Of Donald J. Trump, Hlynur Saemundsson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The presidential pardon power is an oft-overlooked political institution that seems to be perceived as being innocuous and irrelevant to larger political concerns. This research examines the pardons issued by President Donald J. Trump in an effort to evaluate whether they align with constitutional expectations regarding the use of this unrestricted presidential power. Dr. Jeffrey Crouch, a leading scholar on the subject, has demonstrated that the pardon power was intended to be used as a disinterested act of grace or an act in the public interest. A close survey of President Trump’s use of this power shows that many of …

The Anti-Secular Regulation Of Religious Difference In Egypt, Meriam Wagdy Azmi

Theses and Dissertations

Egyptian religious freedom activists and researchers have for decades called for more secularism to remedy the violations facing religious minorities. Those religious minorities have been subject to attacks for practicing religious rituals and suffered from lack of recognition by the government. As those activists advocated secularism, some academics critiqued it and deemed it the instigator of the very problems it claims to uproot. Saba Mahmood famously argued that secularism is a primary producer of religious tension in Egypt. In this thesis, I argue that it is not the mere regulation of religious difference as a feature of secularism that is …

The Federalist Society And Constitutional Interpretation: Who Gets To Say What The Constitution Says, Deborah L. Toscano

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Federalist Society was organized in 1982 by conservative law students to counteract what they perceived to be a liberal bias in law schools, the courts, and government administration. Forty years later there is an acknowledgement of a rightward turn in the Supreme Court which scholars have attributed in part to the efforts of the Federalist Society. However, there is still little understanding of just how that change came about. This dissertation takes a step toward understanding that question. Viewing the Federalist Society as the center of a network of lawyers, think tanks, and legal institutions, I examine the influence …

Was Trump’S Deployment Of Federal Officers To Portland, Oregon And Other Cities During The Summer Of 2020 Legal And Constitutional?, Celina Tebor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Cities across the United States erupted in protest during the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. In response to these protests, President Donald Trump deployed federal troops to multiple cities, including Portland, Oregon. The legal basis for sending the troops was to protect federal property, and relied upon the powers of the Department of Homeland Security and an executive order from the summer. However, President Trump’s rhetoric suggests that the purpose of sending the troops was to quell the protests. Politicians, protestors, and lawsuits have alleged that Trump’s actions are unconstitutional, …

First Amendment Knowledge And Competence In United States Residents, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Kimberly M. Bernstein

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Lacking adequate knowledge about one's rights could inhibit the likelihood of exercising one's rights or lead one to unwittingly violate laws that place legitimate limits on these rights. Thus, the present research examines First Amendment knowledge as well as competence to apply this knowledge in relevant circumstances. Results revealed that one-quarter of participants failed a test of objective knowledge on First Amendment rights. Furthermore, participants' belief in their ability varied depending on their level of knowledge, in line with the Dunning–Kruger effect. Participants also failed to transfer their limited objective knowledge to “real-world” situations, exhibiting impaired First Amendment competence. These …

Ecuador’S Amazon, Rights Of Nature, And The Dilemma Of The 2008 Constitution, Olivia Moore

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In 2008, Ecuador became the first nation in the world to recognize the rights of nature in its Constitution. Ecuador is also a country whose economy depends on the extraction of natural resources. Ecuador thus faces a dilemma, as the two goals of environmental preservation and environmental exploitation conflict with each other. This paper seeks to highlight these conflicting goals, and emphasize the role of Indigenous peoples in Ecuador's Amazon region in fighting for both their rights and the rights of nature.

Self-Determination In American Discourse: The Supreme Court’S Historical Indoctrination Of Free Speech And Expression, Jarred Williams

Honors Theses

Within the American criminal legal system, it is a well-established practice to presume the innocence of those charged with criminal offenses unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such a judicial framework-like approach, called a legal maxim, is utilized in order to ensure that the law is applied and interpreted in ways that legislative bodies originally intended.

The central aim of this piece in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is to investigate whether the Supreme Court of the United States has utilized a specific legal maxim within cases that dispute government speech or expression regulation. …

U.S. Government And Politics In Principle And Practice: Democracy, Rights, Freedoms And Empire, Samuel Finesurrey, Gary Greaves

Open Educational Resources

This book is written for students early in college to provide a guide to the founding documents and structures of governance that form the United States political system. This book is called American Government and Politics in Principle and Practice because you will notice that what has been inscribed in law has not always been applied in practice-particularly for indigenous peoples, enslaved peoples, people of color, women, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, those formerly incarcerated, immigrants and the working class within U.S. society. In designing this book, we have two goals. First, we want you to know what the founding documents …

Power Transitions In A Troubled Democracy, Peter L. Strauss, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

Written as our contribution to a festschrift for the noted Italian administrative law scholar Marco D’Alberti, this essay addresses transition between Presidents Trump and Biden, in the context of political power transitions in the United States more generally. Although the Trump-Biden transition was marked by extraordinary behaviors and events, we thought even the transition’s mundane elements might prove interesting to those for whom transitions occur in a parliamentary context. There, succession can happen quickly once an election’s results are known, and happens with the new political government immediately formed and in office. The layer of a new administration’s political leadership …

Presidents And The U.S. Constitution: The Executive’S Role In Interpreting The Supreme Law Of The Land, Mitchell Scacchi

Honors Theses and Capstones

In 1832, President Andrew Jackson issued a veto message claiming the same duty as the Supreme Court to interpret the U.S. Constitution. Do modern presidents exercise the principal role in interpreting the U.S. Constitution that President Jackson claimed was their duty, and, if so, in what ways do they choose to articulate their interpretations? The hypothesis is that modern presidents have exercised a principal role in interpreting the U.S. Constitution similar to the interpretative duty expressed by President Jackson, and they perform this duty, in part, through the issuance of veto messages and signing statements. After a content analysis of …

Law Library Blog (September 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Intolerant Democrat Syndrome: The Problem Of Indonesian Democratic Consolidation, Saiful Mujani

Jurnal Politik

Indonesia underwent democratization after more than 20 years (1998–2020), but many studies conclude that the country’s democracy is not consolidated and suffered a setback, at least in the last five years. An increase in political intolerance in society is believed to be the cause of this setback. However, studies on Indonesian political tolerance are biased and thus do not reflect actual conditions of general tolerance. This study offers a new unbiased strategy called “content-controlled measures of political tolerance” in the research on political tolerance. This strategy has been used in a series of national public opinion surveys for a relatively …

The Guinea-Bissau Constitutional Reform Debate, Watson Aila Gomes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The enactment of law is not to be confused with the rule of law, and simply having a constitution does not guarantee political order. In Guinea-Bissau there have been calls to write a new constitution, but whether that helps Guinea-Bissau become a more stable country is questionable. Currently, there is a gap in the research of social science, history and political science examining how the processes of instability have unfolded in Guinea-Bissau. Few studies attempt to examine the correlation between a country’s stability and its constitution. A paradoxical situation exists in many countries in Africa where the political system is …

Thank You For Considering Me Such A Huge Threat: A Critical Analysis Of Iran's Foreign Policy, Liza Boyer

Honors Theses

The United States has long held the idea that Iran poses a threat to our interests as well as global stability, implying that Iran is irrational and makes decisions rooted purely in ideology. After creating an independent framework based on rational choice theory, descriptive decision theory, and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I determined four possible ways to describe Iran’s foreign policy: rational-constitutional, irrational-constitutional, rational-unconstitutional, and irrational-unconstitutional. I then apply this framework to six cases which I have identified to be vital to understanding Iran’s foreign policy: Iraq, Israel, United States of America, China, the nuclear program, …

Constitutional War Powers Of The United States: The Founding Prescription And Historical Adherence, Blake Annexstad

Honors Theses

When crafting the United States Constitution, America’s Founders carefully prescribed an institutional balance of the Nation’s war powers between the legislative and executive branches of the federal government. To examine the intentions of the Founders regarding the Nation’s war powers as well as how American leadership has adhered to this intent post-ratification, this study carefully analyzes the circumstances which compelled this balance as well as its application throughout the history of the American experiment. Following an examination of these circumstances and the history of the United States, it is clear that American leadership, despite adhering to the Founders’ intentions for …

Do We Intend To Keep Our Republic?, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] Commentators recently have reminded us of a famous statement Benjamin Franklin allegedly made upon exiting Independence Hall on the final day of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. When asked whether the proposed Constitution would establish a monarchy or a republic, Franklin supposedly answered: "A republic, if you can keep it."

The anecdote, which both inspired the title of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's recent book and was recounted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi when she announced the impeachment inquiry into the conduct of the president, reminds us that our republican form of government is not to be taken …

Healthy And Unhealthy Responses To American Democratic Institutional Failure, Thomas D'Anieri

CMC Senior Theses

I have set out on the hunch that politics in America “feels different,” that we are frustrated both with our institutions as well as with one another. First, I will seek to empirically verify this claim beyond mere “feelings.” If it can be shown that these kinds of discontent genuinely exist to the extent that I believe they do, I will then explain why people feel this way and why things are different this time from the economic, political, and social points of view. Next, I will examine two potential responses, what I will call the populist and the institutional …

Constitutional Reflections Of The People: Representation In The Constitutions Of The United States (1789) And Chile (1833), Zoe E. Nelson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper is a comparative analysis of the American Constitution of 1789 and the Chilean Constitution of 1833, as well as the political writings of major political theorists prior to the making of each constitution. In comparing the historical development and making of Constitutions in post-war, newly independent American nations, this paper seeks to understand the similarities between American and Chilean Constitutional institutions and underlying political theory from a historical perspective. Bearing this purpose in mind, this paper asks, “In what ways were the Constitution making measures of Chile and the United States in 1833 and 1789, respectively, a reflection …

The Relevance Of The Constitution In Today's Society, Matthew Reiber

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

How relevant is the Constitution in today’s society? This is the document that guides the three branches of government in day to day operation, demonstrating that what the Constitution means to the people of the United States is essential in gauging how relevant people think our government is. In this experiment, I surveyed 348 different college students on Boise State campus with a list of different questions to first find out their general knowledge of our Constitution, then their opinion of it. Students were randomly assigned to receive a text about a Supreme Court case that involves interpreting the Constitution …

Public Financing Of Elections In The States, Nicholas Meixsell

Honors Theses

In the US, there is a history of the courts striking down campaign finance reform measures as unconstitutional. As such, there are few avenues remaining for someone who is interested in 'clean government' reforms. One such avenue is publicly financed elections, where the state actually provides funding for campaigns. These systems can be quite varied in the restrictions and contingencies they attach to the money, and for examples one has to look no further than the states There are many states that have some form of public financing for elections, and by looking at the different states' systems we are …

The Age Of Facebook And The Right To Privacy: A Brandeisian Perspective, Kristen Cochran

Political Science Capstone Research Papers

"The right to be let alone"- a statement crafted by Supreme Court Justices Warren and Brandeis- laid the foundation for the understanding of an implied constitutional right to privacy. Justice Louis Brandeis, a critical actor in the development of this right, would argue for extensive privacy protections in today's digital era. Brandeis acknowledged that the right to privacy is not absolute, but he would argue that individual privacy must be protected in an age of technology that makes government and corporate surveillance more covert.

Law Library Blog (March 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.