Fourth Assignment

Choose one:

1.  Pick a democratic country with which you are familiar, either through study or firsthand experience.  How does that country's party system differ from that of the United States?  Consider demographics, ideology, electoral process, and governmental structure.

2. Pick any elected official (e.g., federal or state lawmaker, mayor, supervisor) who serves the area from which you come.  (President and vice president do not count.)  If you are an international student, just pick one who interests you.  How did that person get that office?  Consider the official's characteristics and support base, as well as the makeup of the constituency.  If that constituency strongly favors one party or the other, consider how the official became the party's choice.  Again, pay attention to the local electoral process.

Instructions:

• Document your claims. Do not write from the top of your head. 
• Essays should be double-spaced and no more than three pages long. I will not read past the third page.
• Essays should be in the form of Word documents.  Do not submit pdfs, or Google docs.
• Cite your sources with endnotes in Chicago/Turabian style. Endnote pages do not count against the page limit.
• Do not use ChatGPT or any other generative AI. Misrepresenting AI-generated content as your own work is plagiarism.  It will result in a referral to the Academic Standards Committee.  
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you.
• Turn in essays to  Canvas by 11:59 PM,  Monday, April 28:  note the extra time. (If you have trouble with Canvas, simply email your essay to me as an attached Word file.) I reserve the right to dock essays a gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

Studying for the Final Exam

The final exam for this course will take place in our regular classroom on Tuesday, May 13 from 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM.  It will have three parts.  

Part I: Identifications (4 points each)  In two or three sentences each, briefly identify the meaning and significance of 12 out of 14 names or terms.  These items will come from the "key terms" list at the end of each Lowi chapter, the topics of other assigned readings, and items we discussed in class.  Also see the blog and your own class notes.  (If you have not been taking notes, you should start.)

Part II. Short essays. Answer three of four. Each answer should take about half a page. (6 points each).  These questions will involve key passages from Tocqueville, the Federalist, and other course readings, as well as topics we discussed in class.  Again, the blog and class notes will be an important source.

Part III.  Longer essays. Answer two of three essay questions (17 points each). Each answer should take about 2-3 large bluebook pages or 3-4 small bluebook pages.  Here you should show that you can discuss some of the broader themes of the course.

Bonus questions.  For one point each, identify relatively obscure names from current events or the readings. 

For examples, see the "air midterm" that I posted earlier.  I shall also post a practice final toward the end of the semester.

Mass Media

For Monday, Lowi, ch. 10.

Who are journalists?

The decline of newspapers

IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON A JOB AS A JOURNALIST, SOME ITEMS TO CONSIDER:

From Pew:

Main sources for news (see Lowi 299)

Trust in media 

SPOTTING FAKE NEWS

A quiz

A longer quiz

Giving airtime to conspiracy theory:  Rep. Luna and the Oswald film

(enlarged still)

Pink slime sites:  right and left

Navarro FT article

Peter Navarro managed to get an opinion piece on the Trump tariffs published in the FT (surprising enough in itself). Navarro's rhetoric isn't really new, but the 900+ comments are worth sticking around for – the FT comments are unrelenting (even more so than usual).

Public Opinion

Post papers to Canvas 

This week, I will put up a guide to studying for the final.

For Wednesday, https://libguides.sandiego.edu/fakenews 

What is public opinion?

Attitudes: "evaluative" and "affective" orientations:  approve/disapprove and like/dislike

Knowledge (Lowi 288-289):  Most people, most of the time, know very little about politics.

• Constitutional and institutional knowledge
• "From the River to the Sea"
• Auschwitz
• Location of Korea, Iran, and Ukraine on a map.
• Dihydrogen monoxide

Sources of public opinion (Lowi 277)

Self-interest

Madison, Federalist 10: "As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self­love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves."

Socialization

Family and Identity:  direct and indirect influence

Ideology (Lowi 279-280)

Trump Approval

Trade:  impact of education and party

Measuring Public Opinion

• Polls and Surveys: FAQs
• Response rates
• Nonresponse bias
• Nonattitudes (or pseudo-opinions): Agrabah and Panetta-Burns
• Question wording: the example of civil rights

The Law, Continued

For Monday: Lowi, ch. 9.

Election in Wisconsin

The Court System

• Guide to Supreme Court decisions
• Tocqueville (p. 270): “There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one”  
• NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS

Edwards v Aguillard

Amicus briefs

Decision and opinions

Edwards v. Aguillard oral argument (start around 26:00)

From Topkis's comments -- an example of the value of slow reading:

Now, this bill was of course drafted by a theologian, or somebody versed in apologetics.

There's an amusing bit of evidence on that subject in the very language of the bill.

The bill keeps using... the Act keeps using the term "evidences" in the plural.

We lawyers never speak of "evidences" in the plural. We speak of "evidence", the singular.

And I got nagged by it, and I looked it up the other day.

And of course the only dictionary reference to "evidences" is to Christian apologetics: the evidences for Christianity. This is a matter of theological disputation.

Tocqueville (p. 267): "Nothing could be more obscure and out of reach of the common man than a law founded on precedent…. A French lawyer is just a man of learning, but an English or an American one is somewhat like the Egyptian priests, being, as they were, the only interpreters of an occult science."

• SCOTUS demographics
• The Senate and Supreme Court nominations

Debate over court makeup

Judicial activism (Lowi 2665-268)

Clarence Thomas:



In hearings, senators try to get judicial nominees on the record.  NOTE WHAT ALITO SAYS (START AT 18:45) ABOUT STARE DECISIS.





Merrick Garland and "the Biden Rule" 

Gorsuch and the nuclear option 

KBJ

Blue Slips and Senatorial Courtesy (Lowis 247-248)

The Law

 For next time:  

• Edwards v. Aguillard (482 U.S. 578 (1987)), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/482/578/case.html. Read the syllabus, skim and sample the opinions.  See background materials here:  https://www.oyez.org/cases/1986/85-1513.

Two words to know about the law:  legal fees.

Some basic distinctions

Statutes, Regulations, Judge-made law

The Dangers of the Law

• Tocqueville (p. 267): "Our written laws are often hard to understand, but everyone can read them, whereas nothing could be more obscure and out of reach of the common man than a law founded on precedent.”
• How many federal crimes are there?
• Prosecutorial discretion
• Three felonies a day
• Costs
• Most district attorneys  are elected officials.
• "In most developed countries, particularly in continental Western Europe, Canada, and Japan, prosecutors are resolutely nonpolitical and nonpartisan. They are expected to make decisions about individual cases on their merits, without regard to public attitudes, opinions, and emotions or to politicians’ preferences or priorities. In the United States, however, local chief prosecutors in 45 states are elected (Perry 2006).1 In the federal system, US attorneys are appointed on the basis of partisan and sometimes ideological criteria. American prosecutors sometimes openly and unashamedly take media reactions, public opinion, and political considerations into account when deciding what cases to prosecute and how to handle them."
• Most sheriffs are elected officials.
• Many states elect judges -- key Wisconsin race is under way right now.

Trials and Juries

• Less than three percent of criminal cases go to trial.  The rest end in plea deals.
• The "joy" of jury duty
• My jury experience
• Also watch this clip from the 1959 movie Anatomy of a Murder. Read background here, which explains why law school profs show this clip in courses on criminal law.  Note: the scene includes brief references to sexual assault.
• Tocqueville (p. 275):

Juries invest each citizen with a sort of magisterial office; they make all men feel that they have duties toward society and that they take a share in its government. By making men pay attention to things other than their own affairs, they combat that individual selfishness which is like rust in society.

Juries are wonderfully effective in shaping a nation’s judgment and increasing its natural lights. That, in my view, is its greatest advantage. It should be regarded as free school which is always open and in which each juror learns his rights, comes into daily contact with the best-educated and most-enlightened members of the upper classes, and is given practical lessons in the law, lessons which the advocate’s efforts, the judge’s advice, and also the very passions of the litigants bring within his mental grasp. I think that the main reason for the practical intelligence and the political good sense of the Americans is their long experience with juries in civil cases.

Civil, Criminal, and Public Law (Lowis, 242)

• Even if they win acquittal in a criminal cases, defendants might still face civil suits. See O.J. Simpson

State and Local Judges

Federal Judges

Appellate Courts

• Guide to Supreme Court decisions
• The Senate and Supreme Court nominations
• SCOTUS demographics
• Tocqueville (p. 270): “There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one”  
•