Department of Political Science Works

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Browsing Department of Political Science Works by Author "Blake, William D"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    “The Brooding Spirit of the Law”: Supreme Court Justices Reading Dissents from the Bench
    (2010-01) Blake, William D; Hacker, Hans J
    In rare instances, a Supreme Court justice may elect to call attention to his or her displeasure with a majority decision by reading a dissenting opinion from the bench. We document this phenomenon by constructing a data set from audio files of Court proceedings and news accounts. We then test a model explaining why justices use this practice selectively by analyzing ideological, strategic, and institutional variables. Judicial review, formal alteration of precedent, size of majority coalition, and issue area influence this behavior. Ideological distance between the dissenter and majority opinion writer produces a counterintuitive relationship. We suspect that reading a dissent is an action selectively undertaken when bargaining and accommodation among ideologically proximate justices has broken down irreparably.
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    The Filibuster, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers
    (2003-04) Blake, William D
    The filibuster is inconsistent with the vision of the Senate expressed by the Framers in the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and early congressional history.
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    Jurisprudence Transcending Time and Space: Affirmative Action and the Revolution of 1937
    (2005-04) Blake, William D
    The purpose of this paper is to compare the jurisprudential debate on affirmative action to economic rights questions facing the Court during the Lochner Era. Proponents of the antidiscrimination principle believe that all racial classifications, including affirmative action, are unconstitutional, a view that corresponds with Lochner v. New York. Supporters of the anti-caste principle support affirmative action programs as a means to ensure that the circumstances of one's birth do not preclude the opportunity to succeed, a principle similar to West Cost Hotel v. Parish. These similarities demonstrate that legal principles reflect evolving notions of American ideals present throughout our history.
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    Pine Tar and the Infield Fly Rule: An Umpire’s Perspective on the Hart-Dworkin Jurisprudential Debate
    (2014) Blake, William D
    What is law? Though on its face this question seems simple, it remains an incredibly controversial one to legal theorists. One prominent jurisprudential debate of late occurred between H.L.A. Hart, a positivist, and Ronald Dworkin, an interpretivist. While positivism, at its core, holds the law is a set of authoritative commands, Dworkin rejects this reflexive approach and instructs judges to incorporate and advance communal norms and morals in their decisions. In baseball, umpires utilize both legal theories, depending on the type of rule they are asked to interpret or enforce. I conclude that, like umpires, most citizens are not dogmatic about either legal theory.
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    The Politics of Denying Communion to Catholic Elected Officials
    (De Gruyter, 2013-12) Blake, William D; Friesen, Amanda
    In his 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry, a Catholic, was threatened with being denied Holy Communion because of his pro-choice voting record. This article investigates the extent to which communion denial impacted Catholic elected officials and analyzes public attitudes regarding communion denial for Kerry. The results of our analysis suggest that, despite heavy media coverage, few bishops endorsed the communion denial and few pro-choice Catholic officials were threatened. While the data also indicate there are meaningful political implications for public attitudes on communion denial, the tactic does not command support from many Catholics.
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    Pyrrhic Victories: How the Secularization Doctrine Undermines the Sanctity of Religion
    (2013-03) Blake, William D
    Over the past 25 years, federal courts have sanctioned displays of religious symbols on public property – including the crèche, the Ten Commandments, and the Latin cross – by privileging their secular value or because nearby secular symbols wash away their religiosity. This paper contends that these cases have resulted in government secularization of the religious. Though the appearance of religion has increased in the Public Square, this effort has been partially self-defeating because the distinctive substance of religion has been eroded by this jurisprudence, thereby weakening the sanctity of religion. Minimizing the religious import of these symbols makes dialogue over the proper reach of the Establishment Clause effectively impossible.