Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Court Legitimacy & The Shadow Docket, Colton Tilley

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

The Public’S Preferences In Supreme Court Rationale, William Svob

Honors Theses

Public approval of the Supreme Court has been decreasing in recent years. Given the literature’s consensus that Supreme Court rulings coincide with popular opinion more often than not, the decrease in popularity cannot be explained away by assuming the justices have made a series of widely despised rulings. This raises questions about what exactly the public wants the Supreme Court to do. There is an abundance of research covering the many factors that influence a justice to rule in a particular manner, but there is little written about what the average American believes should influence the Court. This study is …

Turning Back Time: Implications Of Originalist Legal Theory For Women's Rights, Emma Mays

Honors Theses

Since America’s foundation, women’s rights have expanded to lengths that would have been unimaginable to the Founding Fathers including the right to vote, the ability to work outside the home, and some aspects of bodily autonomy. These legal adaptations, along with a larger cultural shift towards liberation, have left many modern-day women with a false sense of security in the face of growing judicial sentiments that threaten the rights of women. The legal theory of originalism that has been growing in force significantly since the 1980s argues that in interpreting constitutional matters, judges should uncover and promote the meaning of …

Free To Hate: Hate Crimes' Intertwinement With The Evolution Of Free Speech In The United States, Lee F. Paulson

Honors Theses

In response to the growing tension between civil liberties and civil rights, this research investigates the relationship between the relative expansiveness of free speech and a the nationwide propensity for hate crimes. I argue that government’s legal limitations of speech influence the development of linguistic and hierarchical norms in a national culture. Given structural inequality’s association to violence and crimes of intimidation, I hypothesize that as the government expands the legal bounds of free speech, the national propensity for hate crimes decreases. Text analyses of 50 influential freedom of expression rulings in the United States (U.S.) Supreme Court from 1919-2019 …

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. …

An Analysis Of Natural Courts: How Vacancies And Replacements On The Supreme Court Best Determine The Ideological Shifts Of The Court And What Effect Longevity Has On Ideology., Lauren Moses

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to explore natural courts and ideology among members of the Supreme Court. Most studies of the Supreme Court allocate focus to the chief justice such that the justice and his ideology determines whether the Court will be described as liberal or conservative for the chief's tenure. However, this thesis questions this model of distinction for the highest court in the land. An analysis of natural courts from Marshall through Roberts specifically targets the highest and lowest ideological shifts between natural courts to understand how vacancies and replacements manipulate the ideology of the Court. In addition to the …

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 …

Gendered Speaking Patterns In Supreme Court Oral Arguments From 1981-2016, Gillain Purser

Honors Theses

This research attempts to discover whether or not the Supreme Court of the United State is subject to implicit gender biases during oral argumentation, largely through examining speaking time and the number of questions each justice is able to ask during a case's oral argumentation period. While there is substantial research on gender’s impact on communication and decision-making processes, as well as gender’s impact on court decisions, most research stops before it gets to the Supreme Court of the United States. There are two main goals to this research: First, to determine whether or not women Justices are impacted by …

"I Respectfully Dissent" : Intellectual Leadership In The Nation's Highest Court, Alison M. Smith

Honors Theses

The right of an individual to dissent from the ideas of his or her peers, or even his or her government, has been one of the defining characteristics of American civil society. The United States itself was founded as a result of American colonists' dissenting from the British government, and our Constitution established a governmental system that would not only accommodate, but encourage a process of deliberative democracy in which the views of both the many and the few would be taken into account and considered thoroughly. A system of internal checks and balances between the legislative, judicial and executive …

Uncharted Leadership : A Study Of Leadership In The Judicial Branch, Kevin Donnelly

Honors Theses

This paper is the final product of a research oriented project in which I studied leadership within the federal judicial system, specifically the Supreme Court of the United States. This project was an in depth study of the amount, style, and effect of Leadership in the Judicial branch. Through this study I hoped to explore a major component of government which has somehow been ignored when studying leadership at the national level.