American Politics Commons^™

Essay: Curing A Monumental Error: The Presumptive Unconstitutionality Of Ten Commandment Displays, Peter Irons

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Unity Of Division: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Selected Speeches From Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential Campaign, Reymond Levy

Department of Writing and Communication Theses

No abstract provided.

A Wink Or A Nod, Mr. President? A Call For The President’S Consideration Of Race, Lilia D. Monzó, Suzanne Soohoo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Dear Mr. President... We ask now that you pour some attention to race and racism in America, and we submit that your leadership in this area is critically important for people of all colors."

Family Ties: Mainstream Environmentalists' Understanding Of Radical Environmentalism In America, Zachary W. Ezor

Honors Theses

Environmentalism in the United States manifests itself in numerous ways. While American environmentalists have been grouped into broad camps over the years, observers have struggled to accurately classify the different components of the movement. Lately, environmentalists have been characterized based on their chosen modus operandi. Environmentalists who employ typical interest group tactics of policy advocacy and accept the notion of political compromise can generally be called 'mainstream.' Alternatively, those environmentalists who employ non-conventional strategies like direct action and take a no-compromise stance on environmental issues are typically described as 'radical.' Despite these distinctions, both radical and mainstream environmentalists are parts …

Will The Real Elena Kagan Please Stand Up? Conflicting Public Images In The Supreme Court Confirmation Process, Keith J. Bybee

Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University

What images of judging did the Kagan confirmation process project?

My response to this question begins with a brief overview of existing public perceptions of the Supreme Court. I argue that a large portion of the public sees the justices as impartial arbiters who can be trusted to rule fairly. At the same time, a large portion of the public also sees the justices as political actors who are wrapped up in partisan disputes. Given these prevailing public views, we should expect the Kagan confirmation process to transmit contradictory images of judicial decisionmaking, with a portrait of judging as a …

Tribal Gaming And The Political Contributions Strategies Of Native American Tribes In Minnesota, Thomas Sorenson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act has made a big impact on tribal-state relations since it was enacted in 1988 by the federal government. Tribes have started to make campaign contributions to state and federal politicians to help try to mold lawmakers to vote for Tribal interests. My research looks at Minnesota tribes and their campaign contributions to House members during the 2005 election, and whether these lawmakers voted for tribal issues during their term. For control variables I also gathered a variety of information related to legislative districts. What my analysis has shown is that the tribes in Minnesota donate …

Gender, Human Security And The United Nations: Security Language As A Political Framework For Women, Natalie Florea Hudson

Political Science Faculty Publications

This book examines the relationship between women, gender and the international security agenda, exploring the meaning of security in terms of discourse and practice, as well as the larger goals and strategies of the global women's movement.

Today, many complex global problems are being located within the security logic. From the environment to HIV/AIDS, state and non-state actors have made a practice out of securitizing issues that are not conventionally seen as such. As most prominently demonstrated by the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2001), activists for women's rights have increasingly framed women's rights and gender inequality as security issues …

The Untold Story Behind California's Scapegoat: An Analysis Of Proposition 13, Corinne Williams

CMC Senior Theses

The California experience previous to the passage of Proposition 13 taught the citizens of California that even with representation, the freedoms of individuals could be threatened. This lesson is especially true when we see the assessment scandals, a rapidly increasing real estate market and the failure of California’s representative officials to respond to the threat to individual liberty. In addition to watching corrupt tax assessors take advantage of the system, individuals were tired of paying inflated property taxes that were changing drastically from year to year. People’s homes were literally being taken from them by the power of the tax …

Reducing Recidivism In The State Of California: An Evaluation Of California's Prison And Parole Programs, Heidi C. Wolfgruber

CMC Senior Theses

Studies in the past few years have found that California has the highest recidivism rate in the nation. Until just a few decades ago, many did not believe that the rate of recidivism could be decreased for Robert Martinson’s 1974 study stated that “nothing worked” when trying to rehabilitate criminals. However, a renewed interest has proven that criminals can be rehabilitated. Thus, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), as well as various independent researchers have begun to study the effects of programming on inmates. This thesis evaluates various California in-prison and parole programs in order to determine if …

The Effects On A State When They Lose Their Senior Senator, Adam J. Morris

CMC Senior Theses

The Primary purpose of this paper is to examine the role and importance of Senior Senators in the US Senate. Many states rely on Senators to bring in federal spending in the form of pork. When states lose their Senior Senator and the power they accumulated through increased tenure, they risk losing certain benefits in terms of pork. We use federal expenditures per dollar of tax and analyze how it is affected by Seniority in the Senate. Population, Income, and unemployment rates in each state were controlled for in our regression analysis. It is concluded that increased tenure significantly increases …

Leaflet: Barack Obama

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

A flyer for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Obama, 2010 Inc. No date given. Box 15 Folder 25

Fairness, Justice And An Individual Basis For Public Policy, Douglas R. Oxley

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Prior models of the policy process have examined how human characteristics can affect policy decision-making in such a way that it leads to aggregate effects on policy outcomes as a whole. I develop a model of the policy process which suggests that emotions related to fair and unfair experiences in the same policy domain are utilized by decision-makers as policy criteria. In the lab, I empirically tested this, and find that emotions and experience related to fairness do influence the policy decision to move away from the status quo alternative. Based upon this result, I simulated the evolution of a …

New York’S Inbred Judiciary: Pathologies Of Nomination And Appointment Of Court Of Appeals Judges, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

The practice of selecting judges by popular election, commonplace among the American states, has recently come in for a good deal of criticism, much of it well-founded. But if popular election of judges is a bad method of judicial selection, what ought to replace it? Opponents of judicial election typically treat gubernatorial appointment as self-evidently better. New York’s experience with gubernatorial appointment to its highest court, the Court of Appeals, suggests that greater caution is in order. Although New York’s current method of selecting Court of Appeals judges was designed to be wide open and based entirely on merit, the …

Anti-Regulatory Absolutism In The Campaign Arena: Citizens United And The Implied Slippery Slope, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Perhaps the most striking feature of the Supreme Court’s constitutional campaign jurisprudence is its longstanding, profound hostility to virtually any government regulation whatsoever of campaign speech and spending. Such an approach is highly unusual in constitutional law, which typically tolerates at least some level of regulatory intervention even with respect to strongly protected rights. The Court’s behavior in this respect is consistent with – and, I argue, is best understood as – the kind of behavior in which a court engages when it fears a slide down a slippery slope. But what lies at the bottom of the slope? And …

The Dignity Of Voters—A Dissent, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Since the waning days of the Burger Court, the federal judiciary has developed a generally well-deserved reputation for hostility to constitutional claims of individual right. In the field of democratic process, however, the Supreme Court has not only affirmed and expanded the applications of previously recognized rights, but has also regularly recognized new individual rights and deployed them with considerable vigor. The latest manifestation of this trend appears to be the emergence of a new species of vote dilution claim that recognizes a constitutionally grounded right against having one’s vote “cancelled out” by fraud or error in the casting and …

How The Peace Was Lost: Ignoring The Presidential Oath In 1964 And 2002-2003, Kenneth M. White

Faculty Articles

On February 16, 2001, while George W. Bush, President of the United States (U.S.), attended a news conference in Mexico hosted by Vicente Fox, President of Mexico, a distinct difference between the two men became apparent when reporters asked questions about Iraq. President Fox hesitated to make a declaration regarding Iraq saying: “this is not the meeting in which decisions or details are going to be reached, because they do not belong in the power of—the executive power, as such, because they have to have the participation of other groups.” When another reporter asked about the then recent bombing of …

Othering Obama : How Whiteness Is Used To Undermine Authority, David S. Owen

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In this paper, I argue that the sociocultural structuring property of whiteness has been utilized to marginalize President Obama and effectively undermine his presidential authority. Whiteness functions in a largely invisible and ostensibly deracialized way to normalize the interests, needs, and values of whites, while at the same time marginalizing and devaluing the voice of people of color. Analyzing the health care debate through this theoretical lens generates insights into how the debate reproduced the system of racial oppression, and how whiteness functions in political discourse.

The “Lunatic Fringe” -- Barry Goldwater And The Conservative Revolution Of The 1960s --, Nicholas L. Bromley

Honors Theses

How did conservatives, who had become effectively ostracized by their party following the Great Depression and the societal reforms of the New Deal, regain leverage within the GOP during the 1960s? My hypothesis is two-fold. First, I contend that a small group of conservative activists led by F. Clifton White, in spite of a dearth of resources and manpower, managed to infiltrate Republican infrastructure and “hijack” the delegate- selection process. The distinctly conservative and recalcitrant disposition of the Goldwater delegates demonstrates that these activists succeeded. Second, I argue that in addition to temporarily overpowering the national convention in 1964, conservatives …

0777: Kenneth Hechler Papers, 1958-1976, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Personal family papers, photographs and correspondence. Includes research material for Hechler's book, "The Bridge at Remagen". Also includes campaign material for Congressional races, West Virginia Secretary of State and a bid for the governorship of West Virginia.

Campaigning In Judicial Elections: The Effects Of Candidate Status, Katelyn Marie Bries

Honors Program Theses

While campaigns for judicial elections in general have received more attention, relatively little research has been done regarding the differences in campaigning for open-seat and incumbent-challenger elections. Because they are the most common type of judicial election, incumbent-challenger races have been the focus of most research conducted thus far. Yet, open seat competitions are important as well. With the incumbent advantage absent in these elections, factors that would otherwise play only a minor role in determining who will be elected have the potential to be much more exaggerated than they do in incumbent-challenger races; consequently, it will be easier to …