AP GoPo Mid-Term Review

Concerns over social capital in America - Bowling Alone trend?

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled " Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civic engagement which a strong democracy requires from its citizens. Putnam discussed ways in which Americans disengaged from political involvement, including decreased voter turnout, attendance at public meetings, service on committees, and work with political parties. Putnam also cited Americans' growing distrust in their government. Putnam accepted the possibility that this lack of trust could be attributed to "the long litany of political tragedies and scandals since the 1960s",[1] but believed that this explanation was limited when viewing it alongside other "trends in civic engagement of a wider sort".[1] Putnam noted the aggregate loss in membership and number of volunteers in many existing civic organizations such as religious groups (Knights of Columbus, B'nai Brith, etc.), labor unions, parent-teacher associations, Federation of Women's Clubs, League of Women Voters, military veterans' organizations, volunteers with Boy Scouts and the Red Cross, and fraternal organizations (Lions Clubs, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, United States Junior Chamber, Freemasonry, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc.).[1] Putnam used bowling as an example to illustrate this; although the number of people who bowled had increased in the last 20 years, the number of people who bowled in leagues had decreased. If people bowled alone, they did not participate in the social interaction and civic discussions that might occur in a league environment.[1] An 1892 portrayal of a bowling establishment in the Spalding Athletic Library reflects the sport's social aspect.[2] Putnam cites data from the General Social Survey that showed an aggregate decline in membership of traditional civic organizations, supporting his thesis that U.S. social capital had declined. He noted that some organizations had grown, such as the American Association of Retired Persons, the Sierra Club, and a plethora of mass-member activist groups. But he said that these groups did not tend to foster face-to-face interaction, and were the type where "the only act of membership consists in writing a check for dues or perhaps occasionally reading a newsletter."[1] He also drew a distinction between two different types of social capital: a "bonding" type (which occurs within a demographic group) and a "bridging" type (which unites people from different groups). He then asked: "Why is US social capital eroding?" and discussed several possible causes.[1] He believed that the "movement of women into the workforce"[1] and other demographic changes had an impact on the number of individuals engaging in civic associations. He also discussed the "re-potting hypothesis", that people become less engaged when they frequently move towns, but found that Americans actually moved towns less frequently than in previous decades.[1][3] He did suggest that suburbanization, economics and time pressures had some effect, though he noted that average working hours had shortened. He concluded the main cause was technology "individualizing" people's leisure time via television and the Internet, suspecting that "virtual realityhelmets" would carry this further in the future.[1] He estimated that the fall-off in civic engagement after 1965 was 10% due to pressure of work and double-career families, 10% to suburbanisation and commuting, 25% to the individualisation of media (television), and 50% to 'generational change'. 5% remained unexplained. Putnam suggested closer studies of which forms of associations could create the greatest social capital, and how various aspects of technology, changes in social equality, and public policy affect social capital.[1] He closed by emphasizing the importance of discovering how the United States could reverse the trend of social capital decay.[1]

Why has capital punishment been so inconsistently applied? Current Standards?

Capital punishment is cruel and unusual. It is cruel because it is a relic of the earliest days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace. Like those barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilized society. It is unusual because only the United States of all the western industrialized nations engages in this punishment. It is also unusual because only a random sampling of convicted murderers in the United States receive a sentence of death. Capital punishment denies due process of law. Its imposition is often arbitrary, and always irrevocable - forever depriving an individual of the opportunity to benefit from new evidence or new laws that might warrant the reversal of a conviction, or the setting aside of a death sentence. The death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. It is applied randomly - and discriminatorily. It is imposed disproportionately upon those whose victims are white, offenders who are people of color, and on those who are poor and uneducated and concentrated in certain geographic regions of the country. The death penalty is not a viable form of crime control. When police chiefs were asked to rank the factors that, in their judgment, reduce the rate of violent crime, they mentioned curbing drug use and putting more officers on the street, longer sentences and gun control. They ranked the death penalty as least effective. Politicians who preach the desirability of executions as a method of crime control deceive the public and mask their own failure to identify and confront the true causes of crime. Capital punishment wastes limited resources. It squanders the time and energy of courts, prosecuting attorneys, defense counsel, juries, and courtroom and law enforcement personnel. It unduly burdens the criminal justice system, and it is thus counterproductive as an instrument for society's control of violent crime. Limited funds that could be used to prevent and solve crime (and provide education and jobs) are spent on capital punishment. Opposing the death penalty does not indicate a lack of sympathy for murder victims. On the contrary, murder demonstrates a lack of respect for human life. Because life is precious and death irrevocable, murder is abhorrent, and a policy of state-authorized killings is immoral. It epitomizes the tragic inefficacy and brutality of violence, rather than reason, as the solution to difficult social problems. Many murder victims do not support state-sponsored violence to avenge the death of their loved one. Sadly, these victims have often been marginalized by politicians and prosecutors, who would rather publicize the opinions of pro-death penalty family members. Changes in death sentencing have proved to be largely cosmetic. The defects in death-penalty laws, conceded by the Supreme Court in the early 1970s, have not been appreciably altered by the shift from unrestrained discretion to "guided discretion." Such so-called "reforms" in death sentencing merely mask the impermissible randomness of a process that results in an execution. A society that respects life does not deliberately kill human beings. An execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve social problems - the worst possible example to set for the citizenry, and especially children. Governments worldwide have often attempted to justify their lethal fury by extolling the purported benefits that such killing would bring to the rest of society. The benefits of capital punishment are illusory, but the bloodshed and the resulting destruction of community decency are real. *Find current standards:

Why was Griswold v. CT so important to Privacy, and in what areas of civil liberties?

Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The case concerned a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of birth control.

Abortion cases and standards

1965 Griswold v. Connecticut381 U.S. 479The ACLU filed a friend-of-the court brief in this landmark case in which the Supreme Court struck down a state prohibition against the prescription, sale, or use of contraceptives, even for married couples. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court held that the Constitution guarantees a "right to privacy" when individuals make decisions about intimate, personal matters such as childbearing. 1971 United States v. Vuitch402 US 62The ACLU's general counsel, Norman Dorsen, argued this case -- the first about abortion to reach the Supreme Court. In United States v. Vuitch, a doctor challenged the constitutionality of a District of Columbia law permitting abortion only to preserve a woman's life or health. The Court rejected the claim that the statute was unconstitutionally vague, concluding that "health" should be understood to include considerations of psychological as well as physical well-being. The Court also held that the burden of proof should be on the prosecutor who brought charges, not on the doctor. 1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird405 US 438The ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Eisenstadt v. Baird, in which the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law limiting the distribution of contraceptives to married couples whose physicians had prescribed them. This decision established the right of unmarried individuals to obtain contraceptives. 1973 Roe v. Wade410 US 113The ACLU's general counsel, Norman Dorsen, was a member of the team of lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the landmark abortion rights case, Roe v. Wade. This case challenged a Texas law prohibiting all but lifesaving abortions. The Supreme Court invalidated the law on the ground that the constitutional right to privacy encompasses a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. Characterizing this right as "fundamental" to a woman's "life and future," the Court held that the state could not interfere with the abortion decision unless it had a compelling reason for regulation. A compelling interest in protecting the potential life of the fetus could be asserted only once it became "viable" (usually at the beginning of the last trimester of pregnancy), and even then a woman had to have access to an abortion if it were necessary to preserve her life or health. Doe v. Bolton 410 US 179The ACLU argued Roe's companion case, Doe v. Bolton, in which the Supreme Court overturned a Georgia law regulating abortion. The law prohibited abortions except when necessary to preserve a woman's life or health or in cases of fetal abnormality or rape. Among other conditions, the law also required that all abortions be performed in accredited hospitals and that a hospital committee and two doctors in addition to the woman's own doctor give their approval. The Court held the Georgia law unconstitutional because it imposed too many restrictions and interfered with a woman's right to decide, in consultation with her physician, to terminate her pregnancy. 1975 Bigelow v. Virginia421 US 809In Bigelow v. Virginia, an ACLU case, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not ban advertising by abortion clinics. Such bans violate the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. 1979 Bellotti v. Baird443 US 622The ACLU represented plaintiffs challenging a Massachusetts statute requiring women under 18 to obtain parental or judicial consent prior to having an abortion. The Court found the statute unconstitutional because, as it was interpreted by the state's highest court, it gave either a parent or a judge absolute veto power over a minor's abortion decision, no matter how mature she was and notwithstanding that an abortion might be in her best interests. Bellotti v. Baird established that all minors must have the opportunity to approach a court for authorization to have an abortion, without first seeking the consent of their parents, and that these alternative proceedings must be confidential and expeditious. 1980 Harris v. McRae448 US 297In Harris v. McRae, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Hyde Amendment, which banned the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion except when the life of the woman would be endangered by carrying the pregnancy to term. The ACLU was co-counsel in this case and played a pivotal role in coordinating challenges to similar state funding bans. Although the lawsuit challenging the federal ban was unsuccessful, the ACLU and its allies did succeed in the ensuing years in overturning many state funding bans. 1983 City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health462 US 416In City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, the ACLU scored an important victory when the Supreme Court struck down all ofthe challenged provisions of an Akron, Ohio, ordinance restricting abortion. Among other holdings, the Court ruled that the city could not: require minors under 15 to obtain parental or judicial consent for an abortion; require physicians to give women information designed to dissuade them from having abortions; impose a 24-hour waiting period after the signing of the consent form; or require that all second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital. Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corporation463 US 60The ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in this challenge to a federal law that made it a crime to send unsolicited advertisements for contraceptives through the mail. The Supreme Court held the law to be unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment's protection of "commercial speech" and impeded the transmission of information relevant to the "important social issues" of family planning and the prevention of venereal disease. 1986 Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists476 US 747The ACLU participated in this case, in which the Supreme Court struck down, among other abortion restrictions, a provision of a Pennsylvania statute requiring doctors to use abortion techniques that maximized the chance of fetal survival, even when such techniques increased the medical risks to the pregnant woman's life or health. 1988 Bowen v. Kendrick487 US 589The ACLU represented plaintiffs who challenged the Adolescent Family Life Act, which authorized the use of federal funds to teach the value of "chastity" in the context of social and educational services for adolescents. Many of the grantees were religious organizations. The Court rejected the claim that the Act, on its face, violated the First Amendment's prohibition of the establishment of religion. It sent the case back to a lower court to determine whether the Act was unconstitutional as administered -- whether actual grants made under the Act were used impermissibly to promote religious views or to engage in religious practices. 1989 Webster v. Reproductive Health Services492 US 490The ACLU participated both in representing the plaintiffs and in coordinating the production of more than 30 friend-of-the-court briefs in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. The case was a challenge to a Missouri law that forbade the use of public facilities for all abortions except those necessary to save a woman's life, required physicians to perform tests to determine the viability of fetuses after 20 weeks of gestation, and imposed other restrictions on abortion. The Supreme Court upheld these anti-choice provisions, opening the door to greater state regulation of abortion. The Court did not, however, accept the invitation of the United States Solicitor General and others to use the case as a vehicle for overruling Roe v. Wade. 1990 Hodgson v. Minnesota497 US 417This case was a challenge to a state law that required a minor to notify both biological parents before having an abortion. It made no exception for parents who were divorced, who had not married, or who were unknown to their daughters. In Hodgson v. Minnesota, the ACLU secured for teenagers the option of going to court to obtain authorization for an abortion, when they could not or would not comply with a parental notification law. 1991 Rust v. Sullivan500 US 173The ACLU represented Dr. Irving Rust and other family planning providers who challenged the Reagan Administration's "gag rule" barring abortion counseling and referral by family planning programs funded under Title X of the federal Public Health Service Act. Under the new rule, clinic staff could no longer discuss all of the options available to women facing unintended pregnancies, but could only refer them for prenatal care. Even though the rule reversed 18 years of policies that had allowed non-directive, comprehensive options counseling, the Court upheld it. (President Clinton rescinded the "gag rule" by executive order shortly after his inauguration in 1993.) 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey505 US 833This case was a challenge to a set of onerous restrictions on abortion enacted in Pennsylvania. As in 1989, the ACLU fought to prevent the Supreme Court from overruling the core holdings of Roe v. Wade. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the Court preserved constitutional protection for the right to choose. But it adopted a new and weaker test for evaluating restrictive abortion laws. Under the "undue burden test," state regulations can survive constitutional review so long as they do not place a "substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus." 1997 Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York519 U.S. 357In this case, the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief defending the constitutionality of two provisions of an injunction obtained by abortion clinics in western New York as a remedy against blockades and other disruptive forms of protest. The Supreme Court upheld a fixed 15-foot buffer zone around clinic doorways, driveways, and parking lot entrances. It struck down a floating 15-foot buffer zone around people or vehicles entering or leaving a clinic. 2000 Stenberg v. Carhart (Carhart I)530 U.S. 914In this case, the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief calling on the Court to invalidate Nebraska's so-called "partial-birth abortion" ban. Sending a strong message regarding the paramount importance of women's health, the Court struck Nebraska's law on two independent grounds: the ban's failure to include a health exception threatened women's health, and the ban's language encompassed the most common method of second-trimester abortion, placing a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking abortions and thereby imposing an "undue burden." 2001 Ferguson v. City of Charleston532 U.S. 67In this case, the ACLU filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Court to void a South Carolina public hospital policy mandating drug testing of pregnant women. In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not permit the state, acting without either a warrant or individualized suspicion, to drug test pregnant women who seek prenatal care in a public hospital. Furthermore, the Court insisted on the importance of confidentiality in the medical context. dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg attacked the majority for placing women's health at risk and for undermining women's struggle for equality. She wrote, "[women's] ability to realize their full potential . . . is intimately connected to 'their ability to control their reproductive lives.'" 2006 Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England546 U.S. 320The ACLU argued this case before the Supreme Court on behalf of the New Hampshire clinics and physician who brought this legal challenge. In a unanimous ruling, the Court reiterated its long-standing principle that abortion restrictions must include protections for women's health. The case began as a challenge to a New Hampshire law that required doctors to delay a teenager's abortion until 48 hours after a parent was notified, but lacked a medical emergency exception to protect a pregnant teenager's health. The lower courts struck down the law because of this omission. The Supreme Court vacated and remanded the case, instructing the lower court to consider whether the New Hampshire legislature would have wanted this law with a medical emergency exception. If not, the Court said the law should be struck down in its entirety. No matter what, the Court said the law must be blocked in those cases where teens face medical emergencies. 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (Carhart II)127 S. Ct. 1610The ACLU filed friend-of-the-court briefs in both cases urging the Court to strike down the first-ever federal ban on abortion methods. Notably, the ban fails to include an exception to protect women's health. (Three legal challenges were brought against the ban, called the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003." The ACLU's challenge, National Abortion Federation v. Gonzales, remained on hold in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit while the U.S. Supreme Court considered the other two cases.) In a 5-4 decision, the Court upheld the federal ban, undermining a core principle of Roe v. Wade: that women's health must remain paramount. In so doing, the Court essentially overturned its decision in Stenberg v. Carhart (Carhart I), issued only seven years earlier. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy evoked antiquated notions of women's place in society and called in to question their decision-making ability. Furthermore, Kennedy held that in the face of "medical uncertainty" lawmakers could overrule a doctor's medical judgment and that the "State's interest in promoting respect for human life at all stages in the pregnancy" could outweigh a woman's interest in protecting her health. In an impassioned

De facto equality

Equality of results, which measures real world obstacles to equal treatment.

Current policies being debated involving gender and family issues - liberal vs. conservative arguments

Liberal: Pro same-sex marriage, equal pay for women, transgender rights, pro abortion, pro reproductive and other women's rights. Conservative: Anti same-sex marriage, quiet on equal pay for women, anti transgender rights, anti abortion, and anti reproductive and other women's rights

Comparison of family leave and comparable worth standards in America and elsewhere?

See article and maps on the following site: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/upshot/paid-leave-democrats.html The World 'Has Found a Way to Do This': The U.S. Lags on Paid Leave The U.S. is one of six countries with no national paid leave. The Democrats have cut their plan to four weeks, which would still make it an outlier. Congress is now considering four weeks of paid family and medical leave, down from the 12 weeks that were initially proposed in the Democrats' spending plan. If the plan becomes law, the United States will no longer be one of six countries in the world — and the only rich country — without any form of national paid leave. But it would still be an outlier. Of the 186 countries that offer paid leave for new mothers, only one, Eswatini (once called Swaziland), offers fewer than four weeks. Of the 174 countries that offer paid leave for a personal health problem, just 26 offer four weeks or fewer, according to data from the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Four weeks would also be significantly less than the 12 weeks of paid parental leave given to federal workers in the United States, and less than the leave that has been passed in nine states and the District of Columbia. Paid leave is part of the Democrats' giant budget proposal, which includes other family policies like child and elder care. They are trying to cut to an amount palatable to Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, whose votes are needed to pass it. For paid leave, decreasing the number of weeks is a simple way to lower the price. Some leave is better than none, researchers said, but evidence from around the world suggests that four weeks is too little to reap the full benefits. "When you look at other countries, there is evidence of what people need and what's feasible," said Jody Heymann, founding director of the policy center and a U.C.L.A. distinguished professor of public health and public affairs. "And by both of those measures, 12 weeks is a modest amount, and anything less is grossly inadequate. The rest of the world, including low-income countries, have found a way to do this." Globally, the average paid maternity leave is 29 weeks, and the average paid paternity leave is 16 weeks, the center's data shows up to 2019. There is one element of the paid leave proposal, however, that would put the United States at the forefront internationally: its very broad definition of family and caregiving. It would cover care for all types of loved ones, including in-laws, domestic partners and people who are the "equivalent" of family. About half of countries allow caregiving leave for sick children. Thirty-nine percent of nations allow it for adult relatives like spouses or parents. Among countries that have leave for family health needs, only 13 define family broadly, including grandparents or other loved ones. Even then, there are sometimes restrictions, like proving that the person needing care is dying. Globally, 109 countries have parental leave available to fathers, which is more than half, and 47 offer more than four weeks. Many rich countries offer more than 12 weeks. Twenty, including Japan, Canada and Sweden, have options for more than a year. For proponents of paid leave in the United States, the broad definition of caregiving for loved ones has been a key demand. "We have always fought for a family definition that reflects what American families really do look like, including chosen family," said Lelaine Bigelow, vice president for congressional relations at the National Partnership for Women and Families. "This has been a big pillar of ours for a long time." Existing family leave policies in the United States already have a broad definition of caregiving, largely because the country came around to offering leave so late. Many countries started paid maternity leave in the 1920s. The American leave program — unpaid and for 12 weeks, for about half of workers — started in 1993. By that point, gender norms had evolved and it was common for mothers to work and men to care for children or relatives. The unpaid leave covers people caring for babies; sick spouses, parents or children; or their own medical conditions. Paid leave is rarely fully paid anywhere; the pay is usually a percentage of the regular salary up to a certain maximum. Around the world, paid leave is generally financed through social insurance, via taxes or contributions from employers and workers. The states with paid leave have a similar system. The federal plan in Congress is limited by the rules of a budget process called reconciliation, and would be paid for, along with other safety net spending, with general revenue, perhaps from a tax on billionaires. The Democrats Have a Lot of Cutting to Do Detailed estimates show the budget bill was even bigger than first thought, which makes getting it below $2 trillion that much tougher. Democrats are considering other options for making paid leave less expensive. These include making it expire after five years, hoping that it would be popular enough that lawmakers would renew it. Another idea is to make it permanent but with fewer than four weeks of leave. Also on the table is means testing: Low-wage workers would get paid leave but others would not. Of people who take unpaid leave in the United States, just over half do so for their own health problems. The United States is one of 11 countries that do not offer paid leave for health problems. Of the countries that do, 132 offer three or more months, and 62 offer a year or more if needed. Many people need more than four weeks. Recovery from major surgery typically takes at least six weeks; recovery from a heart attack can take several months; and cancer treatment often lasts half a year or more. Short-term disability insurance pays for medical leave in some cases, but only about half of workers qualify. And women, workers of color, and low-income Americans are less likely to have it. Research on maternity leave suggests that between three and six months is ideal. For birth mothers, recovery typically takes at least six to eight weeks, and maternal health improves when fathers take leave, too. Research shows babies continue to benefit from being home with a parent for the first half year — for bonding; increasing immunization and breastfeeding rates; and decreasing hospitalizations from infectious diseases. Besides the United States, the only other countries with no national paid maternity leave are the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga. "Any leave is better than zero leave," said Maya Rossin-Slater, an economist in the Stanford department of health policy who studies paid leave. "That being said, I think it's also worth pointing out that some of the health benefits of leave are clearly occurring at higher durations."

Levels of protection for differing types of expression

The First Amendment: Categories of Speech The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from "abridging the freedom of speech," but does not define what that freedom entails. The Supreme Court has long interpreted the Clause to protect against government regulation of certain core areas of "protected"speech (including some forms of expressive conduct) while giving the government greater leeway to regulate other types of speech, including a handful of limited categories that the Court has deemed largely "unprotected." This In Focus provides a broad overview of the main categories of protected and unprotected speech in First Amendment jurisprudence. Introduction The Supreme Court's current approach to free speech is not entirely categorical. That is, just because a law implicates protected speech does not mean that law automatically violates the Free Speech Clause. Likewise, the First Amendment may still provide grounds to challenge government regulation of unprotected speech. As a threshold matter, a court may have to consider whether a law is directed at speech or conduct, and, if the latter, whether that conduct is inherently expressive. A court may also ask whether a law imposes a valid time, place, or manner restriction, e.g., Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703 (2000), or impermissibly regulates speech on the basis of its content or the speaker's viewpoint, e.g., Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 135 S. Ct. 2218 (2015). Nevertheless, identifying the category of speech at issue (e.g., commercial speech, obscenity) is an important step in determining what First Amendment standards, including what level of judicial scrutiny, a court might apply to the law. Regulations of protected speech generally receive strict or intermediate scrutiny, which are high bars for the government to meet. In contrast, the government typically has more leeway to regulate unprotected speech. Thus, the category of speech is an important factor to consider in evaluating Congress's ability to legislate on a given subject. Protected Speech The Supreme Court has recognized that the First Amendment's protections extend to individual and collective speech "in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends." Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 622 (1984). Accordingly, speech is generally protected under the First Amendment unless it falls within one of the narrow categories of unprotected speech discussed in the next section. Whether the Court applies strict scrutiny or a lower form of scrutiny, however, depends on the character and context of the speech. For comparative purposes, this section discusses political speech and commercial speech, speech categories typically associated with two different tiers of scrutiny. Political and Ideological Speech The Supreme Court has long considered political and ideological speech to be at the core of the First Amendment, including speech concerning "politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion." W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943). Political speech can take other forms beyond the written or spoken word, such as money, e.g., Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976) (per curiam), or symbolic acts, e.g., Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989). A government regulation that implicates political or ideological speech generally receives strict scrutiny in the courts, whereby the government must show that the law is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest. Commercial Speech Commercial speech—generally, speech that merely proposes a commercial transaction or relates solely to the speaker's and the audience's economic interests—has historically received less First Amendment protection than political speech. For many years, courts deferred to legislatures when it came to economic regulations that impinged upon speech. However, the Court's 1976 decision in Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748, launched a trend of increased judicial scrutiny over laws implicating commercial speech. Today, commercial speech restrictions typically receive at least an intermediate level of scrutiny if they are directed at non-misleading speech concerning a lawful activity. Under a test set out in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980), such laws are constitutional only if they directly advance a substantial government interest and are not broader than necessary to serve that interest. However, the Roberts Court has appeared receptive to applying a heightened level of scrutiny to certain commercial regulations, such as those that single out commercial speakers for less favorable treatment based on the content of their speech. See, e.g., Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U.S. 552 (2011). In contrast, courts have sometimes applied a less stringent standard than intermediate scrutiny to laws that require the disclosure of factual, uncontroversial information. See Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, 471 U.S. 626 (1985). Unprotected Speech In general, content-based restrictions on speech—laws that "appl[y] to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed"—are presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny. Reed, 135 S. Ct. at 2226-27. However, the Supreme Court has recognized limited categories of speech that the government may regulate because of their content, as long as it does so Updated January 16, 2019 www.crs.gov | 7-5700 evenhandedly. See R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 382-86 (1992). The Court generally identifies these categories as obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement, fighting words, true threats, speech integral to criminal conduct, and child pornography. The contours of these categories have changed over time, with many having been significantly narrowed by the Court. In addition, the Roberts Court has been disinclined to expand upon this list, declining to recognize, for example, violent entertainment or depictions of animal cruelty as new categories of unprotected speech. See Brown v. Entm't Merchs. Ass'n, 564 U.S. 786 (2011); United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460 (2010). Obscenity. In order for material to be obscene, and thus unprotected under the First Amendment, it must, on the whole, "appeal to the prurient interest in sex" (as judged by contemporary community standards), depict or describe sexual conduct (as specifically defined by state law) in a patently offensive way, and lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." See Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24 (1973). Defamation. Although the Supreme Court has held that defamatory statements—false statements of fact about a person—are not protected speech, the Court has also recognized that the prospect of civil or criminal penalties for making such statements might hamper free speech. Accordingly, under certain circumstances, the First Amendment requires a party alleging defamation to demonstrate that the speaker acted with a certain level of intent (e.g., in cases where the statement concerns a public official or figure) or to prove certain injuries. See Gertz v. Robert Welch, 418 U.S. 323 (1974); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). Fraud. Recognizing that "some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation," the Supreme Court has rejected a categorical First Amendment exception for false statements. United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 718-19 (2012) (plurality opinion). Nevertheless, the Court has stated that false statements can form the basis for other "legally cognizable harm[s]" such as defamation or fraud. See id. In general, the government may regulate fraudulent speech in order to prevent public or consumer deception. See Illinois ex rel. Madigan v. Telemarketing Assocs., 538 U.S. 600, 612 (2003). But, as with other types of speech regulations, it may not enact overbroad or unduly burdensome "prophylactic" rules for this purpose. See Riley v. Nat'l Fed'n of the Blind, 487 U.S. 781, 798 (1988); Zauderer, 471 U.S. at 649. Incitement. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447-48 (1969), the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protects advocating the use of force or lawbreaking "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." Fighting words. In 1942, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not protect "fighting words"—those "likely to provoke the average person to retaliation, and thereby cause a breach of the peace." Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 574. However, the Court has since stated that "speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt." Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 458 (2011). And although the Court continues to cite "fighting words" as an example of speech that the government may proscribe, it has not upheld a government action on the basis of that doctrine since Chaplinsky. True threats. The First Amendment does not bar the government from prohibiting some forms of intimidation such as "true" threats. See Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969) (per curiam). True threats—as distinguished from "political hyperbole"— occur when the speaker "means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals." Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 359 (2003). Speech integral to criminal conduct. In general, the First Amendment affords no protection to speech "used as an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute." Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U.S. 490, 498 (1949). The Court has cited this rule as one reason the government may prohibit, for example, conspiracy or solicitation to commit a crime, offers or requests to obtain illegal material, or impersonating a government officer. See United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 297-98 (2008); Alvarez, 567 U.S. at 721. Child pornography. The Supreme Court in New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 764 (1982), recognized child pornography as a category of unprotected speech separate from obscenity, in part because the advertising and sale of such materials is integral to the underlying criminal conduct of their production. Under Ferber, a prohibition on such materials must "be limited to works that visually depict sexual conduct by children below a specified age," and the "category of 'sexual conduct' proscribed must also be suitably limited and described."

Racial minority voting patterns and issues

The Impact of Voter Suppression on Communities of Color Facebook Twitter Share Studies show that new laws will disproportionately harm voters of color. Federal legislation is necessary. PUBLISHED: January 10, 2022 Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images Ensure Every American Can VoteVote Suppression Over the past decade, scholars have studied myriad ways in which certain state voting rules make participation disproportionately difficult for Americans of color — including strict voter ID laws, lines faced on Election Day, and other facets of our election system. This analysis catalogs some of the most prominent research findings on the negative impact of voting restrictions on voters of color. There is a large and growing pile of evidence that strict voter ID laws disproportionately impact voters of color. Using county-level turnout data around the country, researchers demonstrated that the racial turnout gap grew when states enacted strict voter ID laws. Researchers have also looked specifically at the turnout of individuals in North Carolina without proper identification, and they found that the enactment of the law reduced turnout. The turnout effects continued even after the strict voter ID law was repealed. Another study shows that voters in Texas who would be barred from voting absent the state's "Reasonable Impediments Declaration" (a court-ordered remedy allowing voters without proper IDs to participate) are disproportionately Black and Latino. The study argues that its "findings indicate that strict identification laws will stop a disproportionately minority, otherwise willing set of registered voters from voting." An article using a similar methodology and administrative records found that voters of color in Michigan were more likely to show up to the polls without proper identification. Yet another study used survey data to demonstrate that voters of color in states across the country lacked access to the needed IDs to vote in their state. While some studies have argued that voter IDs have little effect on overall turnout, it is clear that voters of color are less likely to have the IDs needed to participate. Restrictions on Sunday voting — such as those proposed last year in Georgia and Texas — would fall disproportionately on voters of color. Our research showed that voters of color were substantially more likely to vote on Sundays in Georgia than white voters. Another study argues that these Sunday voters do not seamlessly transition to other days after cuts are made. For example, when Sunday voting was outlawed in Florida in 2012, Black voters who voted on Sunday in 2008 were especially likely to abstain from voting. Voters of color consistently face longer wait times on Election Day — lines that would be exacerbated by cutting alternative options, such as vote-by-mail or expansive early voting hours. Our report from 2020 indicates that voters of color around the country reported longer wait times in the 2018 midterms, using self-reported wait times from a national survey. Other researchers have used cellphone data to demonstrate the same thing: waits are longer in neighborhoods with more racial and ethnic minorities. Other research — including work from the Brennan Center — has also used administrative data to show that polling places with fewer white voters have more slowdowns. Even vote-by-mail options, however, don't completely level the playing field. Voters of color face more difficulties voting by mail, too. Our research shows that mail ballots were rejected at much higher rates than those of white voters in the Georgia primary in 2020. Other studies have found that this was true in Georgia and Florida's 2018 general elections, too. Polling place consolidation is also especially harmful for the turnout of racial and ethnic minorities. The Brennan Center authored the first academic study documenting the turnout effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. We showed that polling place consolidation severely depressed turnout in Milwaukee's presidential primary — and that the effects were even larger for Black than white voters. This joins other research showing that voters of color are disproportionately impacted by polling place closures. This may be due to worse transportation access.

Criticism and importance of Title IX (9)

Title IX bans discrimination on the basis of sex at colleges and universities. The law impacts college admissions, financial aid, sports, research, and campus life. Title IX also prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Biden administration is rewriting Trump-era interpretations of Title IX. Title IX is a civil rights law that prohibits schools or educational programs that receive federal assistance from discriminating against anyone on the basis of sex. The law was first enacted to stop male-dominated academic disciplines from excluding or discriminating against women. Since the law first passed, however, Title IX rules have continued to evolve in their scope, meaning, and enforcement. Today, Title IX also protects students from sexual harassment and assault and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The past three presidential administrations have made drastic changes to Title IX. The Obama administration dramatically expanded the scope of Title IX protections. Trump-era rules sparked controversy and claims that the law shielded perpetrators more than it protected victims. And now, with President Biden in office, the Education Department has signaled it will roll back Trump-era interpretations of the law. Uncertainty around Title IX rules and enforcement continues to fill news headlines. Take a recent case at the University of Montana. In January 2020, a law professor used gay slurs in class. School administrators informed students the slurs did not violate Title IX. However, due to a 2020 Supreme Court decision, the Biden administration has interpreted Title IX protections to prohibit such slurs. Frequent changes to the law make it critical that students, faculty, and staff understand the history and rationale behind Title IX, which is among the most important federal civil rights protections impacting college campuses. When Was Title IX Passed? Title IX passed in 1972 as part of the Education Amendments Act. The act declares, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." When the law passed, colleges and universities had to modify their practices to comply with these provisions. For example, colleges had six years to hire Title IX coordinators to make sure they were in compliance with the law. Colleges also had to provide equal access to athletics. In 1972, when Title IX became law, women's sports received 2% of college athletic budgets. Many schools had no women's teams at all. The new law required schools to change these policies and rules. Why Was Title IX Created? Before passing Title IX, the federal government banned racial discrimination in higher education with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1972, Congress expanded that protection to include sex discrimination. Federal funding supports colleges and universities. Students use financial aid to attend college, institutions receive federal research funds, and the government offers veteran education benefits that go to schools. As a result, the federal government has an interest in regulating higher education. Preventing sex discrimination benefits students, faculty, staff, and society more broadly. When Congress originally debated Title IX, Sen. Birch Bayh argued "The field of education is just one of many areas where differential treatment has been documented; but because education provides access to jobs and financial security, discrimination here is doubly destructive for women." Title IX is one of many higher education laws passed by the federal government. The Higher Education Act of 1965 established federal student aid programs. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 banned disability discrimination in higher education. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, protects the privacy of college student education records. What Does Title IX Prohibit? The law says colleges cannot exclude, deny benefits from, or discriminate against people because of their sex. That broad language covers everything from college admissions to athletics. For example, colleges cannot deny admission to applicants based on sex — with an exemption for single-sex institutions. Colleges cannot refuse to hire faculty because of their sex. They also cannot offer unequal educational resources that benefit one sex over another. Critically, Title IX protects students from sexual harassment and assault on campus due to two Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2011, the Obama administration issued guidance reinforcing these decisions. President Obama's Education Department also interpreted Title IX to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, protecting individuals who identify as LGBTQ+. The Trump administration rolled back these guidelines in 2017. Based on the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, however, President Biden's Education Department restored the Obama-era protections. The law's prohibitions also extend to recruitment practices, departmental policies, housing, financial aid, and campus health services. If colleges treat students of one sex more favorably, they may be in violation of the law. What Is Title IX in Sports? Men dominated college sports before Title IX. For example, the University of Michigan had no formal women's sports when the new law passed in 1972. Six years later, Michigan had 10 women's teams, demonstrating the major impact the law had on collegiate athletics. The law's concern is equal opportunity to participate in sports; it does not require a men's and women's team for every sport, nor does it require equal funding for men's and women's athletics. The law does, however, prohibit colleges from denying athletic scholarships to women athletes or providing fewer medical services and facilities for women. Title IX greatly expanded women's participation in collegiate athletics. However, compliance remains an issue. While the law requires equity in facilities, benefits, and tournaments, women's sports continue to lag behind men's sports in terms of support. Title IX and Sexual Assault on Campus Despite the Obama administration's 2011 guidance reinforcing Title IX's protections against sexual harassment and assault, sexual violence remains a major problem on college campuses. According to a study by the Association of American Universities (AAU), 13% of college students reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact in 2019.. That number was significantly higher for women, transgender, and nonbinary students. More than one in four undergraduate women experienced nonconsensual sexual contact while in college. Sexual harassment and sexual violence on campus qualify as sex discrimination under Title IX. Harassment, sexual assault, and other forms of sexual misconduct all negatively affect a student's access to higher education. The sexual misconduct protections in Title IX also apply to faculty and staff. Victims of sexual misconduct can file a complaint with their school. Colleges must then investigate the incident and stop the harassment or take disciplinary measures against perpetrators. For example, colleges can issue a no-contact order against perpetrators, offer safety escort services, or expel the perpetrator. However, in recent years the federal government has changed the rules for investigating sexual assault on campus. Obama-era rules placed higher standards on colleges. Schools had to investigate Title IX complaints within 60 days. Victims who dropped out or transferred could still file a complaint. And schools could find respondents guilty if the evidence showed they were more likely guilty than not. The Trump administration rolled back many of these provisions. Under the new rules, schools had no time limit to resolve Title IX complaints, and both the victim and perpetrator had to be currently affiliated with the school for the college to investigate. The new interpretation also set a higher burden of proof for finding an alleged perpetrator guilty. Critics of the Trump-era changes feared the new rules would shield perpetrators — and dissuade victims from filing complaints. For example, the Trump rules subjected survivors to cross-examination at a live hearing, while the Obama rules empowered an investigator to interview survivors and report the findings to a panel. Recently, the Biden administration started the process to rewrite the Title IX rules on sexual assault. The Future of Title IX In the nearly five decades since it became law, Title IX has continued to evolve. While the statute does not explicitly mention sexual harassment, for example, a series of court rulings starting in the late 1970s slowly expanded Title IX protections to include sexual harassment. Similarly, in the 1970s the NCAA argued that Title IX did not apply to athletics, an interpretation that did not hold for long. The past three presidential administrations have altered Title IX rules related to sexual harassment and assault. These changes have sparked a fierce debate over how to protect students from sexual violence while also offering due process for accused perpetrators. In his first months in office, President Biden has taken steps to change Title IX rules — including expanding the law to cover sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. LGBTQ+ students face elevated risks of sexual violence. In the 2019 AAU survey, 23% of undergraduate transgender students reported nonconsensual sexual contact in college. By extending protections to transgender students, Title IX will continue to serve its original mission: to protect access to higher education for everyone.

Marriage as a fundamental right - 10th Amendment - Loving v. Virginia miscegenation laws

10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. 14th Amendment: Relevant Section: # 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Loving v. Virginia Miscegenation Laws Case and Final Opinion: Primary Holding A unanimous Court struck down state laws banning marriage between individuals of different races, holding that these anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Facts Like 16 other Southern states, Virginia enforced a law that banned marriage between whites and African-Americans. Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and an African-American woman, married in Washington, D.C. to avoid the application of Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, known as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. They returned to Virginia, however, where police found them in the same bed in their home at night. During the raid, the police found the couple's marriage certificate in their bedroom. This document became the basis for criminal charges against the Lovings under the anti-miscegenation law and a related statute. There was no trial, since they pleaded guilty and received a choice between spending one year in prison or leaving the state for the next 25 years. The Lovings moved back to the District of Columbia but soon found themselves wishing to return to Virginia. In 1964, five years after their conviction, Mrs. Loving contacted the ACLU via Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. This case arose when the ACLU sought to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence, while the Lovings also filed an action in federal court. Their claims were heard in the Virginia Supreme Court, which modified the sentence but affirmed the convictions. Opinions Majority Earl Warren (Author) Hugo Lafayette Black William Orville Douglas Tom C. Clark John Marshall Harlan II William Joseph Brennan, Jr. Byron Raymond White Abe Fortas Justice Warren did not accept Virginia's argument that placing equal penalties on spouses of each race made the law non-discriminatory. He pointed out that the law did not criminalize marriage between persons of two non-white races, which suggested that it had a white supremacist motivation. There was no other legitimate purpose that could justify this law or any others like it, Warren held, since it infringed upon the fundamental right of marriage. Concurrence Potter Stewart (Author) Largely echoing Warren's reasoning, Stewart simply wrote an additional opinion as a reminder that he had advocated striking down anti-miscegenation laws in an earlier opnion from the case of McLaughlin v. Florida. Case Commentary This is the prime example of a statute that is discriminatory on its face because it turns race, a protected classification, into one of the elements of a crime. Most discriminatory laws are now framed more subtly. The decision is also notable because it classifies marriage as one of the fundamental rights that are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Be able to identify the "isms" that complete the American political spectrum

Classical Liberalism Liberalism can be a confusing term because it can mean more than one thing. Classical liberalismdescribes a major direction in western politics, of which American liberalism is a subset. Despite some wild-eyed conservatives accusing President Obama of being a socialist (because that's still dirty word in American politics), both Democrats and Republicans in the United States fall under the umbrella of classical liberalism. In the big picture, U.S. politics are fairly homogenous. Classical liberalism has two prominent features: A reliance on markets for economic decision making. A reliance on democratic institutions for political decision making. A reliance on markets means that people get to vote with their dollars, pounds, rupees or euros on what they want to buy and how much they're willing to pay for it. A market is all the producers, sellers and buyers of any product or service, such as the market for smart phones. In classical liberalism, we tend to try to leave markets alone to function as consumers and businesses see fit. So instead of the state deciding what gets produced and how much it will cost, the market decides through millions of individual transactions. Individuals can own and invest in businesses; businesses have some ability to choose what to make and what to charge for it. We call this economic system capitalism (a term first used, perhaps, by the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray in 1852, although the term "capitalist" appears to be older). Capitalism aims to promote maximum wealth by letting people try, fail and succeed in business. The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (who didn't call it capitalism) described this in his work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. Smith (1723-1790) noted that just letting people do what they wanted to do produced more wealth, more efficiently, than did the prevailing economic theory of the time, mercantilism. Mercantilism was a very Euro-centric theory (though it has since been applied elsewhere). It argued that the nation with the most gold was the best off. It also argued that nations should maximize imports and minimize exports, while maintaining overseas colonies to serve as sources of raw materials and markets for finished goods. This was the kind of policy that helped spur the American revolution, by limiting the British American colonists' ability to make what they wanted and trade with whom they wanted to. Ironically, perhaps, it is the very strategy that allowed the "Asian tigers"—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore—to grow so much in the post-World War II era—limit imports, maximize exports, and build up domestic industries so they can compete effectively on world markets. Adam Smith's book is long enough, and few enough people have read it, that it gets used to justify almost any sort of behavior. To our eyes, he didn't understand so much about how prices are set, particularly rents on property (he wrote, more or less, that it was about costs). But he did seem to grasp some ideas that are still with us today. In perhaps his most famous (and in some ways, most unfortunate) phrase, Smith wrote that if people simply tried to take care of themselves (make money), they would in fact make others better off (as if, he wrote, guided by "an invisible hand"—a verbal construction that makes it seem as if economics was some mystical science. It isn't). What Smith was really saying was that by working hard, saving, investing and consuming, people in a market economy generate more wealth, which means they are able to take care of themselves and their families, in the process of which they spend some of that wealth which generates more economic activity elsewhere in society. What is sometimes overlooked in Smith's work is that he understood, explicitly, that people are often trying to rig the market to limit competition, raise prices, and increase profits. Smith reserved special scorn for the East India Company, the government-sponsored monopoly that was in the process of robbing and conquering India and the Indians. In particular, Smith criticizes the company for how bad it was treating the Indians, who were in the process of being excluded from meaningful participation in the economic and political life of their country. Despite (and perhaps because of) its monopoly status—it had no legal competitors for British trade with India—it was a terribly inefficient business, so much so that the British government had to repeatedly bail it out. This led the Brits to dump tea on the North American market, which led to the Boston Tea Party and the American revolution. The British economy of the time still featured a lot of medieval laws restricting trade and the movement of workers, both of which kept prices high, supply down and the wages of most people lower than they would be otherwise. Smith understood that capitalism would generate more wealth for more people, as long as markets could be kept free of restraints. The other half of the classical liberal prescription is a reliance on democratic institutions: In classical liberalism, political decisions are made in some way by people casting votes. States decide who is a qualified citizen, and those people get to vote in free elections. The state may set rules on who can run for office, such as a minimum age requirement, but if you reach that age, the state cannot decide that you can't run. Candidates don't have to be approved by the government before they can seek office. In most if not all instances, citizens elect people who make decisions on their behalf. This kind of government is called a republic. As with every approach to government and the economy, classical liberalism has its share of strengths and weaknesses. By allowing people to spend and invest as they wish, and by depending on open elections, it provides a higher degree of individual liberty than do some alternatives. It creates opportunity for participating in the economic and political life of a country. By relying on markets to make economic decisions, it tends to produce more wealth, more efficiently (at lower cost). Because it depends upon elections for political decision making, it gives citizens an outlet for their discontent, and allows them to make changes to law and policy. On the other hand, while classical liberalism tends to produce more wealth, it may distribute that wealth unevenly. An uneven distribution of wealth can lead to wealthy people dominating the political system. They have more money to contribute to election campaigns, and more resources with which to lobby the government. The U.S. Senate is pretty much a millionaires' club now, for example, and while it's not impossible for a very wealthy person to understand the concerns of someone who is poor, it may also be harder for them to understand the concerns of the less wealthy. Because the creation of wealth often gets tied to the broader concept of liberty, the system may have a difficult time dealing with problems generated by market activity, such as pollution. State controls on pollution, because they cost money, lower profits, and, under this equation, loss of profits gets portrayed as a loss of liberty. Conversely, if the specific political system is more inclusive—gives everybody a real voice—it may not be very efficient in decision making, and may in fact be slow to respond to people's needs. So, for example, in the United States, the financing of the Medicare system faces problems down the road. Although it's a train wreck that everybody can see coming, the political system has so far been unable to deal with it because, in part, because of pressure from so many interest groups. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes to pay for the system, but nobody wants to reduce benefits in any way. While the political system may eventually deal with this, it might be better to deal with it sooner rather than later. The form of the republic is not terribly important in considering how liberal it is. So it doesn't matter of the republic is a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary democracy, or has an American-style division of power between president and the Congress. What matters is the availability of free and fair elections. Scholars classify some republics as "illiberal democracies," because although there are elections, they don't appear to be completely free and fair, such as in Russia. They may have either a parliamentary or a president/legislative government, but the system does not always work as advertised. Singapore is sometimes called an illiberal state, because of the dominance of a single party and restrictions on civil liberties. Mexico was an illiberal democracy for much of the 20th century, when the Institutional Revolutionary Party won every national election, regardless of the actual vote count. American Liberalism Classical liberalism isn't what many people in the United States mean when they say "liberal," however. American liberalism is a particular flavor of classical liberalism. Originally, it was a political philosophy that argued that government had a positive role to play in society. This movement and its cousin, progressivism, grew out of the reaction to the excesses of late 19th and early 20th century capitalism—no protections for workers such as a 40-hour week and mandatory overtime, child workers chained to factory floors, and very few health, safety and environmental laws. Progressives (which some liberals have begun to call themselves, after American conservatives managed to turn "liberal" into a dirty word) saw a world that was dominated by big business and by big city political machines. Big business limited competition and raised prices through the creation of trusts, conglomerations of firms in the same market so that one really big company dominated the entire market. Big city political machines dominated urban politics for much of the first half of the 20th century, uniting blocks of immigrant voters behind regimes that controlled much of what happened in large cities. While they empowered the powerless, who had been excluded from the political spoils of city life by business interests, they tended to exclude all the people who didn't agree with them. So the Progressives pushed for electoral reforms such as non-partisan elections (in which candidates don't run on the basis of party), open primary elections (previously dominated by party organizations, who thus controlled which candidates got on the ballot), and a stronger role for government in economic management (such as breaking up the trusts). American liberalism can find its roots in the Progressive movement, but it really took flower after the Great Depression. Private charity was completely overwhelmed by the high level of unemployment, and so American politics turned heavily toward an active role for government in economic and eventually personal affairs. Liberals fought for more protections for workers and unions, a broader social safety net for the poor and unemployed, and health, safety and environmental regulations. As always, this approach to government has both costs and benefits—fewer people starving to death (which sometimes happened before welfare and unemployment compensation), versus higher taxes and higher costs for businesses and consumers, driven in party by complying with more regulations. American Conservatism American conservativism, like American liberalism, is a subset of classical liberalism, though perhaps a tiny big closer to the ideal. American conservatives have tended to argue for less government involvement in the economy, a movement that also grew out of the Great Depression. As the size and scope of U.S. government grew in the post-World War II era, conservatives began to argue that taxes and regulation were hampering economic growth and actually lowering people's standards of living. Conservatives argue that people should be able to make their own choices about where to spend their money, pointing out that taxes to support government programs effectively make those choices for you. They also argue that too wide a social safety net discourages people from working and taking care of themselves. Traditional American conservatives tend to favor lower taxes, a balanced federal budget and less regulation of the economic system. In more recent years, however, a subset of American conservatives have become more concerned about issue such as abortion rights and gay marriage, topics that traditional conservatives might have avoided. For some conservatives, less government means less government. Others, including some who might call themselves Christian conservatives because of their faith, support social legislation to ban some kinds of behavior and encourage others. Conversely, so while American liberals have usually tended to advocate more government involvement in economic life, they now tend to favor less government involvement in private life. Religious conservatives tend to favor less government involvement in economic life, but more government involvement in private life. And liberals and religious conservatives sometimes find common ground over environmental issues. As the American writer Charles Dudley Warner said in the 1800s, "Politics makes strange bedfellows." Realistically, we shouldn't be surprised that people hold opinions (more government in some areas, less in others) that don't always appear to be logically consistent. When we consider the liberal/conservative dichotomy, it's difficult to draw a clean line. Many of us have issues on which we are conservative, and others on which we may be liberal. For example, conservatives are for less government involvement in the economy, and yet southern conservative members of Congress consistently vote for subsidies for tobacco farmers. Populism While we're on the subject of American political isms, we shouldn't forget populism. Populism is not so much an ideology as an approach to politics. At its best, populism displays a genuine concern for citizens whose rights and needs have not been considered. At its worst, populists can be as oppressive as the people they replaced. A lot of the time, populism often displays a sort of talk-radio level of understanding of complicated issues (which is to say, not very much. Talk radio hosts on the left and on the right often seem to oversimplify complex topics, without always grasping the difficult choices behind them). Generally speaking, populists make an appeal to the common person, and claim to represent their interests, as opposed to the interests of the rich and powerful. American political figures such Huey Long, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan were or are populists. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who claims to represent the common people of his country but who has also enriched his family while in office, is a populist. Populism is a common theme in American politics; most American political candidates attempt to paint themselves as ordinary folks just like you and me. A movie such as Dave, a 1993 film starring Kevin Kline, plays on the American attraction to populism. Kline plays an average, well-meaning guy who's a dead-ringer for the president. When called upon to fill in for the incapacitated (and not very nice) president, Dave, among other things, manages to balance the federal budget with the help of his accountant over sandwiches one night. (Seriously, if it were that easy, wouldn't it have happened by now?) But the theme is common throughout American politics—if only honest, hard-working people of good moral standing could make it into office, all of our problems would go away. Populists are fond of bashing big business, and/or big government; of promising to stand up for the little guy; and of vowing to save the nation from its certain doom. The problem with populists is that in those rare occasions where they get elected to major office, they tend to run things in the very way they have criticized the establish order about—high-handed, unresponsive, with surprisingly little real concern for what might best serve the state as a whole. When Huey Long became governor of Louisiana in 1928, he raised taxes on oil companies, got free textbooks for school children, and got roads and bridges built for a state that desperately needed them. However, he also forced state employees to donate 10 percent of their wages to his re-election fund, doled out highway contracts based on who kicked back the most money, harshly punished political opponents, and, by the time he was assassinated in 1935, had become the virtual dictator of the state. So while populists, like most people in politics, mean well, they don't always perform well. Libertarianism Libertarians believe in the least amount of government possible—national defense, police and fire, and not much else. (I'm over-simplifying here, but not by much). True libertarians are not at all concerned with social issues, as they don't see that as government's job. Hard-core American libertarians tend to oppose a global role for the U.S. beyond trade and commerce, leaving most decisions about everything up to private citizens. Libertarianism grew out of the reaction to Soviet-style communism in the post-World War II era. Soviet-style communism was not noted for its commitment to liberty of any kind, and a number of writers, such as the novelist Ayn Rand, and economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman pushed for hands-off approach for the state. Libertarianism offers considerable freedom of choice on a range of issues, and this is its chief virtue. By not encumbering the economy with higher taxes and regulations, it may promote economic growth. And the idea of maximum personal freedom is often very appealing. But to argue that if less government is better, then nearly no government is ideal is a difficult assertion. For one thing, the government of the United States (and parts of Europe) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was very much like the libertarian prescription. Government was incapable of dealing with economic downturns, and people suffered as a result. Workplace, food and transportation safety issues were not addressed, and the concentration of economic power tended to prod government to favor the wealthy even more. The first anti-trust laws, passed to break up business monopolies, were used instead to prevent workers from forming unions. You might think that's a good idea or a bad one, but if businesses can organize, why not workers? (You will, as always, have to make up your own mind on questions such as this.) Libertarianism doesn't seem designed to deal with environmental issues in particular, as markets by themselves aren't always very good at dealing with problems such as over-fishing and air and water pollution. Libertarians would argue that such questions really are a matter of property rights, as in if what you do impacts the value of my property, then I have a valid complaint. However, that presumes that not much that happens on my property will impact your property, a notion that some ecological scientists would probably take issue with. Libertarianism appeals to some people in current American politics, perhaps because when government does not seem to be performing well, the idea of less government sounds like a potential improvement. Many Americans are sympathetic to the notion of keeping the government from telling people how they should live. We might call that small "l" libertarianism, as opposed to those who belong to or support the Libertarian Party, which seeks to win elections to put their principles into practice. Some citizens probably also find appeal in the notion of a smaller government in hopes that would mean lower taxes. It's an open question whether libertarianism could be made to work better than it did in the 1800s. Some people would tell you that it worked just fine; others point to the problems of the era as evidence that it didn't work all that well. A lot of services that government provides would go away, and how much infrastructure investment—roads, bridges, port facilities, public education—would happen under a libertarian government is not clear. Obviously, I'm skeptical of this ideology, though you may not be (and that's OK). Libertarian students will sometimes respond to my criticisms of libertarianism by saying "But Any Rand said..." to which I reply, "For an economist, Ayn Rand was a helluva novelist." Suffice it to say that libertarianism, like most ideologies, has its strengths and weaknesses. KEY TAKEAWAYS Classical liberalism is currently the dominant political and economic philosophy in the world. Classical liberalism and its variants all have strengths and weaknesses. Classical liberalism is perhaps the dominant ideology of our time. Since World War II, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, more countries have moved from authoritarian governments to liberal ones. Economies have turned away from planning and toward markets for decision making, and people have pushed for more democratization in government. While this movement has been uneven both in timing and results, completely undemocratic states have declined in number. So in only a relative handful of states is either one or a small group of people in charge. But classical liberalism isn't the only way to run a society. Socialism You probably won't need to know these for this question: Other isms that are more prevalent outside US. Socialism is purely an economic system, and one that gets thrown around a lot in American political discourse (with reference to scary things Americans may not like). What it really means is public ownership of productive resources. Instead of private firms such as Ford, GM and Chrysler, you might have the Department of Automotive Transportation. This would be a state agency, charged with producing automobiles for society and with employing people to do that. Whereas capitalism is more concerned with generating wealth and efficiency, socialism is more concerned with equality of outcome. Socialists point to decades of growing inequality under capitalism and argue that it just doesn't work. And right there is where we find the strengths and weaknesses of socialism. A private corporation such as Ford has shareholders—investors who own the company—who want to see the company be profitable and be paid back for their investment (through dividend payments and a higher share price). So Ford's management has to pay attention to costs as well as sales, so in theory it won't employ any more people than it has to. The automotive department also has to try to produce cars with reasonable efficiency, but it also is supposed to employ people so they all have jobs. More to the point, it is less likely to lay people off when sales are down. That adds costs and will make the organization less efficient. It will probably generate less wealth, although it may spread that wealth around more evenly. So, at a minimum, there's a trade-off there between efficiency and equity. In effect, more people will get benefits, but the average benefit level may be lower. From a consumer standpoint, there's also a cost. Government managers historically cannot predict what people will want in terms of consumer goods, so that high-demand items tend to be in short supply while low-demand items tend to be oversupplied. And the goods tend to be of substandard quality. In a market-oriented system, firms that make bad goods go out of business. In a managed system, the organization making the bad goods is unlikely to be punished for making bad goods; it will be rewarded for putting more people to work. A market system also will make many of the same mistakes, but they are corrected more quickly. An example of the challenge of socialism could be found in Poland before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Poland was then ruled by the Communist Party, and under the thumb of the Soviets. But what matters to us in this example is that the economic system involved socialism. In many parts of the world, bread is a basic foodstuff. In order to make bread available for everyone, state-run bakeries were limited in what they could charge for bread. As the bakeries could not thereby increase production (added ingredients cost extra money which, in a market economy, often means higher prices in the short term). So production was limited, and bread, perhaps because of the artificially low price, was always in short supply. The price of cake was not limited, however, and the bakeries always had plenty of cake. Marie Antoinette may not have said, "Let them eat cake," but socialist Poland's economic managers effectively did. So socialism tends to offer a higher floor and a lower ceiling. Wealth is more evenly distributed and people tend to get the minimum of what they need—food, clothing, housing and health care. On the other hand, there's just less of everything to go around, and consumers tend to see less quality and less choice. Overall standards of living may be lower. And while a socialist state could be democratic in terms of open elections, the lack of a meaningful private sector at least calls into question whether there will be political interests who are able to oppose the power of the state. We should understand that in fact most states have what we might call a mixed economy, combining elements of both socialism and capitalism. That means that some services and goods will be provided by the private sector, while others may be provided by a public agency. So in the United States, for example, in some parts of the country people buy their water from private water companies. But in other parts, especially in the west, water is often provided by utility districts, which are owned by the people who live in the district and managed by an elected board of commissioners. The same thing is true for a number of utility services, such as sewage treatment and electricity. People routinely argue both sides of this question, even in an ostensibly capitalist nation such as the United States. Advocates of markets maintain that socialism will limit freedom and lower living standards, while critics of capitalism point to poverty amid the considerable wealth created by market activity. You will have to decide for yourself where you land in that debate. Communism Communism is another complicated idea. For the men who coined the term, the 19th century German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, and his partner Friedrich Engels, it meant a state that "withered away," as people evolved out of the basic greed that makes capitalism possible. For critics of the idea, it tends to mean the economic and political system employed in the Soviet Union (1917-1991) and in China from 1949 until the early 1980s. We can't really know what Marx would have thought of this, as he was somewhat vague on how to get to the workers' paradise he envisioned, and he didn't live to see what a self-professed Marxist state actually looked like. So we should be careful to separate Marx from his several stepchildren. This system is also sometimes called Marxism-Leninism, after Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), founder of the Soviet Union and the person who put Marxism into practice. So while we can't say for sure what real communism might be like, we can talk about what people who said there were communists did. For lack of a better term, Soviet-style communism meant a high degree of socialism (and hence a low degree of private ownership), coupled with a one-party state. So while there were elections in the Soviet Union, there was usually only one candidate, who had been approved by the Communist Party. Soviet communism had all the problems of socialism, and then some. While it did mean that people had jobs, homes and health care, consumer goods were often inferior and in short supply. The old joke about the Soviet Union was that it's minus-60 degrees Fahrenheit in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in February and you still can't get a cold Coke (Soviet-made refrigerators being not very good at actually keeping things cold). For a while, especially after World War II, it looked like the Soviet system might actually work. The Soviet Union enjoyed substantial economic growth in the years after the war, and you had to wonder when Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev promised "We will bury you" in a famous speech to western ambassadors in Poland in 1956. It didn't last. When much of your economy has been destroyed by war, and you're effectively starting from zero, your initial growth rates will look pretty good. In reality, it simply wasn't a very efficient system. Other than weapons, there were no Soviet-made consumer goods that anybody in the rest of the world wanted to buy. Western travelers to the Soviet Union often reported making money selling denim jeans on the black market to fashion-hungry Russian consumers. And you could always get a better exchange rate on rubles to dollars if you met somebody around the corner. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic echoes continued. When I covered air shows around the world, at which aerospace manufacturers pitched their products to airlines and defense officials, it took some years before Russian aerospace representatives learned to say "we think this product will help our customers make money." Before that, they mostly talked about how much product they could push out the door, not whether it was any good. I visited a friend of mine in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, in 1993 after the collapse of the Soviet empire. His fax machine didn't work; three employees from the state telephone company came out to tell him that it was broken, and they offered to sell him a new one for $600 (about $900 in 2012 prices). The problem was in the phone lines, however; his fax machine worked fine at his neighbor's apartment. "This is the legacy of 40 years of socialism," said my friend. "These guys just don't want to work." Later that day, however, we happened across the monument to the victory of the west in the Cold War. As we rounded a corner in Bratislava, we came upon on a K-mart with a Pepsi billboard on the side. "There, you see?" I told my friend. "That's it. We won." That being said, Soviet citizens, when surveyed, said they didn't mind the system, but they were often unhappy with the government. The one-party state meant there were no avenues for public protest and discontent, and throughout Soviet history people were thrown in jail or even killed for disagreeing with the state. So while the system provided basic standards of living for most people, it tended toward political repression. That's because the system was aimed at creating a broad version of socialism, and because ruthless people were sometimes more likely to take power. The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin may have killed 6-7 million of his own people; Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung may have killed 30 million. Chinese communism was different than Soviet communism. In a time of unrest and disunion in China following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty early in the 20th century, Mao led what amounted to a peasant rebellion to take control of the country in 1949. China was a land of millions of landless peasants. Unlike the Nationalists led by Chaing Kai-Shek, Mao was not beholden to the landlords and moneyed interests. He insisted that his soldiers treat the peasants with respect, and he offered those peasants hope. Mao redistributed land to the peasants, and agricultural production boomed. He then declared that peasant farmers could form cooperatives to pool their resources, and production rose even more. But then he declared that the farms were to be collectivized—owned by the state—everybody and nobody—and production fell. So while Chinese communism was never quite the unyielding monolith that Soviet communism became, it increasingly became a function of Chairman Mao's quirky ego. Around 1958, in a quixotic bid to produce more steel than the United Kingdom (and modernize China's economy), Mao pushed the people to create backyard steel furnaces. This led to smelting down lots of useful stuff to make useless steel, and to a famine that killed 20-30 million people (since so much food was diverted from the countryside to the cities). Even the current Chinese government has declared that the Great Helmsman was right only about 70 percent of the time. Later, Mao pushed what became known as the Cultural Revolution (roughly 1966-1969, with echoes until 1976), in which legions of young people led an effort to denounce people who appeared to have backslid away from true communism. This led to widespread destruction of Chinese cultural artifacts, some deaths, and millions of people persecuted for their alleged capitalist beliefs. A Chinese colleague of mine in graduate school said that his parents, schoolteachers, were forced to the school every day to be denounced for their crimes. He said this lasted for two years. Defenders of communism argue that a Marxist state doesn't have to be like that, but too often it was. The Soviet constitution was full of guarantees of human rights, but there was no way to compel the state to enforce those guarantees. Any citizen could join the Communist Party, but that was no guarantee of having any influence. The lack of meaningful political participation both delegitimized the state in the eyes of its citizens, and also failed to provide any kind of check on the power of the state when it went off course. And that happens, because the communist governing apparatus tends to invite ruthless people to take power. Whoever can threaten or appeal to the vanity of enough people will sometimes get the job, and sometimes can be too often. (It sort of reminds me of a lot of places I've worked—the people who become managers are truly terrible with people, but they said what the bosses above them wanted to hear.) With no check on the power of the state, a bad leader can cause great suffering for a lot of people. Ironically, the communist state that may have worked the best was also led by a strongman dictator, Yugoslavia under Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980). Yugoslavia had been cobbled together by the British and French at the end of World War I, ostensibly to make it big enough to defend itself. But in the process, they lumped together a diverse set of people—Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrins, Slovenians, Albanians and Macedonians—who hadn't always gotten along. Tito held it all together for as long as he lived, and Yugoslav communism apparently did feature worker-led enterprises, higher standards of living, and less outright oppression than was common in some other states. (Although when I traveled through it in the 1970s, it still looked pretty bleak compared to the rest of Europe.) Tito was noteworthy also for thumbing his nose at both the Soviets and the Chinese. But after Tito's death, the patchwork nation quickly unraveled, leading to a war that gave us the term "ethnic cleansing" as Serbs fought Croatians and Bosnians in a rather nasty conflict. Yugoslavia is now no more, having dissolved into at least seven different states, none of them still communist. The performance of other communist states, like the states themselves, has been all over the map. China's rulers still call themselves the Communist Party, but they're not very communist, particularly when it comes to economic policy. It's now possible to own a business in China, although the government still plays a big role in the economy. Ditto for Vietnam. China is an interesting experiment in the long-term survival of a communism party, if not of communism. Since the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, the country has gradually liberalized its economy. Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), "rehabilitated" after falling victim to the Cultural Revolution, became the new leader in 1978. Deng had been a Marxist since his youth, but later uttered the very un-Marxist statement "It doesn't matter if it's a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches a mouse." As the economy was opened up under this leadership, he followed up his earlier pronouncement with the less ambiguous "It is glorious to be rich." Farms were de-collectivized, people were allowed to start businesses, and the economy boomed. China is now the second largest economy in the world, after the United States. However, if we measure the economy on a per-person basis (per capita GDP, or gross domestic product), China ranks 95th (the U.S. slips to 20th), which means there are hundreds of millions of very poor people among China's estimated population of 1.5 billion. Rising living standards is one of the key ways in which the not-very-Communist Party maintains legitimacy. Western scholars have two theories about how this will all play out: In the hard-landing scenario, China falls apart. The soft-landing scenario, China evolves into something more like a liberal democracy. Chinese officials in different parts of the country have different theories—in the north, they say they will remain "communist," while in the south I have heard scholars say "we'll be a democracy in 20 years." Despite a substantial degree of government control and influence on the economy, the Chinese for the moment have rejected the economic portions of communism. North Korea remains an economic and political basket case, where the government maintains legitimacy by convincing people that the state is all that stands between the people and sure annihilation by the rest of the world, even as the people literally starve to death. At the other end of the spectrum is Cuba, which has high rates of literacy, housing, employment and good health care, but no political freedom and a fair amount of political repression. Under founding father Fidel Castro's brother, Raoul, some small economic liberalization has occurred—you can own a restaurant, for example, but only employ family members. This is of small consolation to the Cuban-Americans, exiles, who lost land and businesses when Cuba went communist in 1959. Despite its successes, Cuba has gone from a food exporter to a food importer in 50 years of communism, and its future remains uncertain. Anarchism Anarchism is an interesting and challenging school of thought, and perhaps the one that might not actually have been really tried (aside from the occasional experiment). Anarchists, like libertarians, want nearly no government, but unlike libertarians, theirs is a vision driven by localized cooperation rather than by a faith in markets. The anarchist vision is a little bit like Marx's workers' paradise, but anarchists are less likely to call for a dictatorship of the proletariat to get us there. Some thinkers have said that what Marx missed was the idea that it doesn't matter what kind of state and economic institutions you have, all of them will become tools of oppression. Marx would have disagreed; his vision was that the state would "wither away" as people learned to co-exist and no longer required the overarching management of a formal state. This is, in a way, the "don't hate the playa, hate the game" school of political philosophy. We're not bad people; it's the state that makes us that way. Beyond that, one lumps together the many strains of anarchism at one's own peril. Anarchists range from people who think society should be organized collectively (anarcho-communists) to a libertarian strain that believes in private property and free enterprise, just no government (and no big business). Anarcho-syndicalists want to replace capitalism with an economy run by workers for workers, with "production for use, not for profit" and an end to wages. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tze advocated a kind of anarchist approach to life. At one point in his writings he encouraged the good person to move to the country, and live simply with family members (and a few servants). Lao Tze may have been a contemporary of Confucius (551-479 BCE); on the other hand, he did write something, the Tao te Ching, one of those vague works of literature that has since been claimed an influence by elites, the poor, libertarians, and Moslems, as well as anarchists. The American writer Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) said that government was an engine of evil, promoting corruption and dishonesty, but he only said one should disobey government when it does wrong. What he preached bordered on anarchism; it was Thoreau (and not Thomas Jefferson) who said "The best government is that which governs least," following that up with "That government is best which governs not at all." But Thoreau appeared to be speaking as much metaphorically as he was practically. The first person to call himself an anarchist was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), a French politician and theorist. Proudhon argued that "property is theft"—in essence, saying that claiming to own something necessarily steals it from someone else. He also characterized anarchism as "order without power," underscoring anarchists' general belief that if left alone, most people will do the right thing. Whereas most political philosophers have focused on what people do wrong, anarchist thought does focus more on what people do right. It's hard to judge these ideas. This hasn't been tried on a large scale, and it's really difficult to imagine a society so decentralized existing amid a world of nations armed to the teeth and a world of businesses bent on profit. But things that look like anarchism have been tried on a small scale; the history of the 1800s is dotted with town-sized utopian experiments where people tried to live the kind of life anarchists have long preached. Experiments in anarchist-style societies have been short-lived, if only because they were overrun by forces that wanted to be in power themselves. At other times and places, such as Robert Owen's New Harmony community in Indiana in the 1820s, things fell apart if only because some people worked and some people just didn't. Owen (1771-1858) was a British mill-owner (and hence a capitalist) who styled himself a socialist reformer. His mill in Manchester, England, was a model for its time, and he limited his profits to try to take better care of his workers, many of whom were orphan children. This was a time when many millworkers were paid only in company tokens, redeemable only at the company store. Workers were often little better than serfs, bound to the factories where they worked and to the towns in which they lived. Owen envisioned small, self-governing, self-supporting communities in which people would take care of themselves and provide for their own needs. Owen managed to give this a try, both in Scotland and in Indiana. Both experiments fell apart, as friction developed between people who wanted to work and people who apparently wouldn't. So while it might be true that most of the time people will do the right thing, just often enough, they don't. We can't know whether anarchism is any of its forms would work; we do know that it, like every other ideology, it would have its strengths and weaknesses. One society that looked a bit like anarchy, and worked, was the Tiv of Nigeria. The fourth-largest ethnic group in Nigeria, the Tiv governed themselves by relying on relationships. They all considered themselves descended from the same ancestor (a man named Tiv), and society was broken down into small, extended family groups who lived and worked together. Tiv society, before the British began to try to impose "order," had no courts, no chiefs, no elected councils—just family and relationships. Disputes were settled by bargaining and negotiation, and by the knowledge that relationships are ongoing. You don't want to anger anyone too much, because today's opponent may be tomorrow's ally. And so, with remarkable success, the Tiv worked things out, and long maintained a relatively peaceful, stable society. How would this work elsewhere? Would it work elsewhere? Again, we can't really know for sure. Clearly, for the Tiv, a sense of kinship and common lineage helped; in fluid societies in the west, people sometimes barely know their neighbors before they move. By multiple accounts, the lack of sense of community makes us less happy, but that seems unlikely to change for the foreseeable future. So the constant introduction of new people means that it could be more difficult for people in many parts Europe, Asia and the Americas to create a system of self-governance based on lineage, kinship and custom. Clearly, in some ways, government does make people worse off. Wherever human institutions are created, for whatever reasons, some people will sometimes misuse them to exercise power over other people. Human institutions create traditions, which will be both valuable in creating predictability, and damaging because traditions can limit the possibility of needed change. But even if we concede that human institutions can make people worse, and worse off, that doesn't necessarily say that a lack of institutions—a lack of government—will make them better, or better off. The institutions in which we live—schools, businesses where we work, churches, governments—have an impact on how we develop and behave as people. But we also have an impact on them, and each of us, in some small way, make those institutions what they are. Nazism and Fascism We have saved the worst for last. Fascism, and its more racist cousin, nazism, should be the least-appealing ideologies we can find, and yet some people are drawn to them even in this day. Fascism got its start in Italy in the mind and ideas of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945). The word fascism derives from an Italian word that originally meant a bundle, as in sticks, but later came to mean a group or a league. Mussolini was not the first to use the term that way, but he helped put fascism on the political map in the way that we understand it today. Mussolini was a bully, a thug, a man who used fear to gain power. He started his political life as a socialist, then invented fascism as a way of gaining power and justifying the use of that power. Much of Europe was in economic and social turmoil after the end of World War I. Mussolini climbed through that window of opportunity. He took power in 1922 by marching on Rome with an army of ruffians. Despite having been defeated at the polls in previous elections, his threatening behavior led him to be named prime minister. As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, California, "there's no 'there' there." Stein was certainly wrong about Oakland, but it's certainly true of fascism. To read anything by a famous fascist such as Hitler or Mussolini is to quickly recognize that this isn't a theory as much as it is a lot of words without much real meaning. The rationalization of fascism is pretty much, "we're right; you're wrong if you're against us; and we're right because we say we're right." This is an oversimplification, but not much. Fascism glorifies the power of the state, but it's hard to tell how that makes the majority better off. Fascism argues that some people are just better than others, and they should be in charge. Naturally, the only test of this is whether you agree with the fascists. As a result, fascism appeals to nationalism, that sense of a people that they have unique qualities and a unique destiny. Fascism glorifies the state; the individual exists for the state, not the other way around. Fascism glorified war and poked fun at peace; it was also expressly anti-communist. Fear of communism, in the wake of the Russian revolution, was to be a commonly played card in western politics for decades to come. Despite how the horrors of World War II discredited fascism, it got a boost in the Cold War era (between World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union) because it could claim to be not communist, oppressive though it typically was. This became increasingly awkward for western powers such as the United States, because it meant we were allied with rulers whose politics were antithetical to what Americans say they believe about freedom and democracy. But if they were against communism, we helped prop them up. Nazism was Adolph Hitler's version of fascism, and Hitler was an early admirer of Mussolini (who was not so far gone that he didn't soon realize, after they met, that Hitler was crazy). Nazi was a corruption of "National Socialist," the name of Hitler's party. That was an odd name, as the party clearly didn't believe in socialism. Germany was the only Nazi state, and it lasted barely 12 years. Yet it remains worth considering because of the unparalleled damage it did to people around the world. As with Mussolini's writing, Hitler's meandering diatribes don't really describe a coherent ideology as much as they justify the use of power for private ends. Nazism, as you probably know, was expressly racist, denigrating everyone who didn't fall into Hitler's vision of a perfect Aryan race. (There probably were Aryans, once, and they were most likely from India.) Like Mussolini, Hitler took power through fear and intimidation. Also like Mussolini, he rapidly ended any pretense of electoral government. Unlike Mussolini, whose crimes were serious but much smaller, he proceeded over the next dozen years to horrify the world in ways it could not have previously imagined. An estimated 60 million people died in World War II, and while Hitler wasn't responsible for all of their deaths, he was the leading cause of the tragedy. Nazism and fascism could be said to be forms of totalitarianism, a kind of authoritarian government that relies on an arbitrary view of the law (it's not the same very everybody), and the cult-like status of official leaders. It's a religion in which the thing to be worshipped is the state, and the state takes human form in the guise of the leader. It becomes, in the end, an extended pep rally, with rather severe penalties for not cheering along. So there's not much to say for fascism in any form. The one possible strength of fascism is its ability to make decisions, but the fact they are usually such wrong decisions makes that of no consolation. Mussolini was said to make the Italian trains run on time, but even that was a myth: The trains didn't run on time during World War I; after that, they got back on schedule. Under fascism, the lack of meaningful elections provides no check on the power of the state, which can then proceed to systematically oppress unpopular groups. Fascism purports to be capitalist, but as the system rewards friends and punishes enemies, the uneven granting of state favors means market don't really function efficiently, and people's economic opportunities may be quite limited. This is sometimes called "crony capitalism," and it tends to be a problem in authoritarian regimes in general. Fascism only ever seems to take hold when someone is able to convince people that their order and security are at risk, even as those agents tend to be contributing to that problem. Mussolini promised a restored Roman empire and Hitler a "thousand-year reich," but together all they got was a decade or two of incredible human suffering. No other ideology can make that claim, and none should. Mussolini was killed by his own people in 1945; they cut off his head and stuck it on a pole near Milan. Not long afterward, Hitler took poison in a bunker in Berlin. He had his henchman burn his body so that he is head wouldn't end up the same way. The longest-surviving fascist state may have been Spain under the rule of Francisco Franco (1892-1975). Franco took power at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). He ruled until his death in 1975, decreeing that when he was gone, Spain would again become a monarchy. King Juan Carlos, upon taking office, called for elections and Spain became a constitutional monarchy and a liberal democracy, which it remains. Franco probably was able to remain in power because he didn't follow Hitler and Mussolini, who had supported him in the civil war, into World War II. Franco didn't start out as a fascist, and didn't end up as one. He relied on the support of the Spanish fascist Falange party, but after the end of that war, Franco backed away from fascist ideology, although he continued as dictator until his death. Fascism has never entirely gone away; there are tiny neo-Nazi movements scattered around the U.S. and Europe. Mussolini's granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, after a career as a minor film star and pin-up girl, has served in both the European and Italian parliaments. While she hasn't shied away from her grandfather's notorious past, her politics, while generally right wing, have been all over the map. Maybe it's something about Italian politics. Voters there also once elected former porn star Ilona Staller to parliament, but she was a member of the Lista del Sole, the first Italian pro-environment party.

Federalism complexities - Marijuana legislation

Complexity: Federal and state laws are not always in alignment (the same). Marijuana legalization example: Marijuana use and sale is not legal according to federal law, but is legal in many states (Colorado Washington, Oregon, and others for example)

Conservative position and debate over equality of opportunity versus equality of result

Conservatives on Equality of opportunity: Really means "sufficiency of opportunity." They don't believe all children should start from the same place. But they believe all children should start from a good enough place. They believe they should have decent nutrition and functioning schools and a safe community and loving parents. They believe they should have a chance. Conservatives on Equality of result: Conservative policies suggest that poor are held back by the government spending too much money to cover needs of the poor (examples: uninsured and too much money on food stamps and too much money on education and too much money on childhood nutrition and too much money on daycare). Less government spending on social and welfare programs would enable poor to better take care of themselves.

De Jure Equality

Equality before the law. It disallows legally mandated obstacles to equal treatment, such as laws that prevent people from voting, living where they want to, or taking advantage of all the rights guaranteed to individuals by the laws of the federal, state, and local governments.

Gender exclusion case and standards

Gender Discrimination: U.S. Supreme Court Cases By FindLaw Staff | Reviewed by Bridget Molitor, J.D. | Last updated June 18, 2020 Gender discrimination — or sex discrimination — is a form of discrimination that includes many different aspects of everyday life. Not only is it illegal to treat someone unfairly or inappropriately due to their sex, but courts have also extended coverage of sex discrimination to include discrimination due to pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Regardless, the scope of federal gender discrimination protections with respect to LGBTQ individuals is unsettled and remains a contentious issue. Below is a list of U.S. Supreme Court cases involving gender discrimination and women's rights, including links to the full text of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Cleveland Bd. of Ed. v. LaFleur (1974) The Supreme Court found that Ohio public school mandatory maternity leave rules for pregnant teachers violate constitutional guarantees of due process. Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986) The Court held that a claim of "hostile environment" sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that may be brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson v. Transportation Agency (1987) The Court decided that a county transportation agency appropriately took in account an employee's sex as one factor in determining whether she should be promoted. Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools (1992) The Court decided that an award of money damages is possible in a case brought to enforce Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, alleging sexual harassment and abuse by a teacher. J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel T.B., (1994) The Court held that prosecutors may not use peremptory challenges to dismiss jurors based on their sex. United States v. Virginia (1996) The Court found that sex-based "separate but equal" military training facilities violated the Equal Protection Clause. Faragher v. City of Boca Raton (1998) The Court decided that an employer may be liable for sexual discrimination caused by a supervisor, but liability depends on the reasonableness of the employer's conduct, as well as the reasonableness of the plaintiff victim's conduct. Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Serv., Inc. (1998) The Supreme Court held that sex discrimination consisting of same-sex sexual harassment can form the basis for a valid claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999) The Court ruled that a lawsuit under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 may be filed against a school board based on student-on-student sexual harassment if the board is deliberately indifferent to sexual harassment, has actual knowledge of the harassment, and the harassment is so serious that it deprives the victims of access to the educational opportunities or benefits provided by the school. Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education (2005): The Court held that an individual can bring a retaliation claim under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 when they are retaliated against for speaking up about sex discrimination. Burlington Northern & Sante Fe Railway Co. v. White (2006): A company's indefinite suspension of an employee to avoid sexual harassment claims constituted unlawful retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) The Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This ruling clearly states that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are sex discrimination for the purpose of the Act, and are therefore illegal under federal law.

Be able to trace LGBT protections from Griswold to Obergefells to Zarda

-In Griswold, decided in June, 1965, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that Connecticut's ban on contraception was unconstitutional, not on the ground of a woman's right to determine the timing and the number of her pregnancies but on the ground of a married couple's right to privacy. "We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights," Justice William O. Douglas wrote in the majority opinion. "Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred." In Obergefell v. Hodges, a consolidation of the petitions of four couples seeking relief from state same-sex-marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The federal Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Court in 2013, in U.S. v. Windsor, a ruling in which Kennedy cited and quoted his opinion in Lawrence. But bans still stand in thirteen states. In 2004, Ohio passed a law stating that "only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state." The Ohioans James Obergefell and John Arthur had been together for nearly twenty years when Arthur was diagnosed with A.L.S., in 2011. In 2013, they flew to Maryland, a state without a same-sex-marriage ban, and were married on the tarmac. Arthur died three months later, at the age of forty-eight. To his widower, he was, under Ohio law, a stranger. The Court is expected to issue a ruling in June. *Check recent update for Obergefell -Bostock v. Clayton County, GA / Zarda v. Altitude Express / RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes Inc v. EEOC On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision that discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation is sex discrimination, and violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This federal law, which often is referred to as "Title VII," prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion.

Three classifications and protective standards for discrimination

1) Race/Color: Race/Color Discrimination Race discrimination involves treating someone (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because he/she is of a certain race or because of personal characteristics associated with race (such as hair texture, skin color, or certain facial features). Color discrimination involves treating someone unfavorably because of skin color complexion. Race/color discrimination also can involve treating someone unfavorably because the person is married to (or associated with) a person of a certain race or color. Discrimination can occur when the victim and the person who inflicted the discrimination are the same race or color. Race/Color Discrimination & Work Situations The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment. Race/Color Discrimination & Harassment It is unlawful to harass a person because of that person's race or color. Harassment can include, for example, racial slurs, offensive or derogatory remarks about a person's race or color, or the display of racially-offensive symbols. Although the law doesn't prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted). The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer. Race/Color Discrimination & Employment Policies/Practices An employment policy or practice that applies to everyone, regardless of race or color, can be illegal if it has a negative impact on the employment of people of a particular race or color and is not job-related and necessary to the operation of the business. For example, a "no-beard" employment policy that applies to all workers without regard to race or national origin may still be unlawful. If a "no-beard" policy is not related to the job and in effect disproportionately harms employment opportunities based on race or national origin, the policy is unlawful. 2) Religious Discrimination Religious discrimination involves treating a person (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because of his or her religious beliefs. The law protects not only people who belong to traditional, organized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, but also others who have sincerely held religious, ethical or moral beliefs. Religious discrimination can also involve treating someone differently because that person is married to (or associated with) an individual of a particular religion. Religious Discrimination & Work Situations The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment. Religious Discrimination & Harassment It is illegal to harass a person because of his or her religion. Harassment can include, for example, offensive remarks about a person's religious beliefs or practices. Although the law doesn't prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that aren't very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted). The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer. Religious Discrimination and Segregation Title VII also prohibits workplace or job segregation based on religion (including religious garb and grooming practices), such as assigning an employee to a non-customer contact position because of actual or feared customer preference. Religious Discrimination & Reasonable Accommodation The law requires an employer or other covered entity to reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so would cause more than a minimal burden on the operations of the employer's business. This means an employer may be required to make reasonable adjustments to the work environment that will allow an employee to practice his or her religion. Examples of some common religious accommodations include flexible scheduling, voluntary shift substitutions or swaps, job reassignments, and modifications to workplace policies or practices. Religious Accommodation/Dress & Grooming Policies Unless it would be an undue hardship on the employer's operation of its business, an employer must reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices. This applies not only to schedule changes or leave for religious observances, but also to such things as dress or grooming practices that an employee has for religious reasons. These might include, for example, wearing particular head coverings or other religious dress (such as a Jewish yarmulke or a Muslim headscarf), or wearing certain hairstyles or facial hair (such as Rastafarian dreadlocks or Sikh uncut hair and beard). It also includes an employee's observance of a religious prohibition against wearing certain garments (such as pants or miniskirts). When an employee or applicant needs a dress or grooming accommodation for religious reasons, he should notify the employer that he needs such an accommodation for religious reasons. If the employer reasonably needs more information, the employer and the employee should engage in an interactive process to discuss the request. If it would not pose an undue hardship, the employer must grant the accommodation. Religious Discrimination & Reasonable Accommodation & Undue Hardship An employer does not have to accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices if doing so would cause undue hardship to the employer. An accommodation may cause undue hardship if it is costly, compromises workplace safety, decreases workplace efficiency, infringes on the rights of other employees, or requires other employees to do more than their share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work. Religious Discrimination And Employment Policies/Practices An employee cannot be forced to participate (or not participate) in a religious activity as a condition of employment. 3) Sex-Based Discrimination Sex discrimination involves treating someone (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because of that person's sex, including the person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy. Discrimination against an individual because of gender identity, including transgender status, or because of sexual orientation is discrimination because of sex in violation of Title VII. For more information about LGBTQ+-related sex discrimination claims, see Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination. Sex Discrimination & Work Situations The law forbids discrimination when it comes to any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment. Sex Discrimination Harassment It is unlawful to harass a person because of that person's sex, including the person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy. Harassment can include "sexual harassment" such as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person's sex, including the person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general. Both the victim and the harasser may be any sex, and the victim and harasser may be the same sex or a different sex. Although the law doesn't prohibit minor teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not frequent or serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted). The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, a subordinate, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer. Sex Discrimination & Employment Policies/Practices An employment policy or practice that applies to everyone, regardless of sex, can be illegal if it has a negative impact on the employment of people of a certain sex and is not job-related or necessary to the operation of the business.

Be able to track the evolution of race in public education - from Brown to Seattle Schools

1950s 1954 | U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision outlaws segregated schools. 1960s 1963 | Committee appointed to come up with solution to "gross racial imbalance" in certain schools in the Central Area. Recommends program of open enrollment. 1963 | Start of voluntary-transfer program in Seattle. At peak in 1969-70, 2,604 students participated, of whom 2,200 were black. 1970s 1972-77 | Various attempts to promote voluntary integration, including magnet programs in 27 schools, and adding a strong science program and new facilities to Garfield High. Some mandatory assignments in middle school. Still, by district's definition, 26 schools in 1977 remain "racially imbalanced." Spring 1977 | The NAACP files a complaint with Office of Civil Rights over racial segregation in Seattle schools. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Church Council of Greater Seattle also threaten to go to court. December 1977 | School Board adopts the Seattle Plan, making Seattle the first major city to adopt a comprehensive desegregation plan without a court order. Fall 1978 | The Seattle Plan goes into effect, putting 12,000 students on buses. 1980s Fall 1980 | Three years after busing went into effect, Cleveland High is the only "racially imbalanced" school, and it's not far out of balance. February 1981 | Declining enrollment leads the School Board to approve closure of 10 elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools. 1989-90 | District scales back mandatory busing. Starts system called "controlled choice." 7,400 students receive mandatory assignments. 1990s 1997-98 | Superintendent John Stanford ends busing for desegregation. District adopts policy called the "racial tiebreaker." Policy allows students to get preference for popular high schools if they would improve the racial balance at those schools. 2000s 2000 | Parents Involved in Community Schools files suit over racial tiebreaker. At the time, the policy affected about 300 high-school students. 2001-02 | Due to ongoing court case, district stops using racial tiebreaker in assigning students to schools. 2007 | U.S. Supreme Court outlaws use of racial tiebreaker. School Board adopts new framework for school assignment, with a focus on placing more students in neighborhood schools.

Be able to identify problems with polling - sample errors, sources, access, and exit polls.

5 key things to know about the margin of error in election polls BY ANDREW MERCER In presidential elections, even the smallest changes in horse-race poll results seem to become imbued with deep meaning. But they are often overstated. Pollsters disclose a margin of error so that consumers can have an understanding of how much precision they can reasonably expect. But cool-headed reporting on polls is harder than it looks, because some of the better-known statistical rules of thumb that a smart consumer might think apply are more nuanced than they seem. In other words, as is so often true in life, it's complicated. Here are some tips on how to think about a poll's margin of error and what it means for the different kinds of things we often try to learn from survey data. 1What is the margin of error anyway? Because surveys only talk to a sample of the population, we know that the result probably won't exactly match the "true" result that we would get if we interviewed everyone in the population. The margin of sampling error describes how close we can reasonably expect a survey result to fall relative to the true population value. A margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level means that if we fielded the same survey 100 times, we would expect the result to be within 3 percentage points of the true population value 95 of those times. The margin of error that pollsters customarily report describes the amount of variability we can expect around an individual candidate's level of support. For example, in the accompanying graphic, a hypothetical Poll A shows the Republican candidate with 48% support. A plus or minus 3 percentage point margin of error would mean that 48% Republican support is within the range of what we would expect if the true level of support in the full population lies somewhere 3 points in either direction - i.e., between 45% and 51%. 2How do I know if a candidate's lead is 'outside the margin of error'? News reports about polling will often say that a candidate's lead is "outside the margin of error" to indicate that a candidate's lead is greater than what we would expect from sampling error, or that a race is "a statistical tie" if it's too close to call. It is not enough for one candidate to be ahead by more than the margin of error that is reported for individual candidates (i.e., ahead by more than 3 points, in our example). To determine whether or not the race is too close to call, we need to calculate a new margin of error for the difference between the two candidates' levels of support. The size of this margin is generally about twice that of the margin for an individual candidate. The larger margin of error is due to the fact that if the Republican share is too high by chance, it follows that the Democratic share is likely too low, and vice versa. For Poll A, the 3-percentage-point margin of error for each candidate individually becomes approximately a 6-point margin of error for the difference between the two. This means that although we have observed a 5-point lead for the Republican, we could reasonably expect their true position relative to the Democrat to lie somewhere between -1 and +11 percentage points. The Republican would need to be ahead by 6 percentage points or more for us to be confident that the lead is not simply the result of sampling error. In Poll B, which also has a 3-point margin of error for each individual candidate and a 6-point margin for the difference, the Republican lead of 8 percentage points is large enough that it is unlikely to be due to sampling error alone. 3How do I know if there has been a change in the race? With new polling numbers coming out daily, it is common to see media reports that describe a candidate's lead as growing or shrinking from poll to poll. But how can we distinguish real change from statistical noise? As with the difference between two candidates, the margin of error for the difference between two polls may be larger than you think. In the example in our graphic, the Republican candidate moves from a lead of 5 percentage points in Poll A to a lead of 8 points in Poll B, for a net change of +3 percentage points. But taking into account sampling variability, the margin of error for that 3-point shift is plus or minus 8 percentage points. In other words, the shift that we have observed is statistically consistent with anything from a 5-point decline to an 11-point increase in the Republican's position relative to the Democrat. This is not to say such large shifts are likely to have actually occurred (or that no change has occurred), but rather that we cannot reliably distinguish real change from noise based on just these two surveys. The level of observed change from one poll to the next would need to be quite large in order for us to say with confidence that a change in the horse-race margin is due to more than sampling variability. Even when we do see large swings in support from one poll to the next, one should exercise caution in accepting them at face value. From Jan. 1, 2012, through the election in November, Huffpost Pollster listed 590 national polls on the presidential contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Using the traditional 95% threshold, we would expect 5% (about 30) of those polls to produce estimates that differ from the true population value by more than the margin of error. Some of these might be quite far from the truth. Yet often these outlier polls end up receiving a great deal of attention because they imply a big change in the state of the race and tell a dramatic story. When confronted with a particularly surprising or dramatic result, it's always best to be patient and see if it is replicated in subsequent surveys. A result that is inconsistent with other polling is not necessarily wrong, but real changes in the state of a campaign should show up in other surveys as well. The amount of precision that can be expected for comparisons between two polls will depend on the details of the specific polls being compared. In practice, almost any two polls on their own will prove insufficient for reliably measuring a change in the horse race. But a series of polls showing a gradual increase in a candidate's lead can often be taken as evidence for a real trend, even if the difference between individual surveys is within the margin of error. As a general rule, looking at trends and patterns that emerge from a number of different polls can provide more confidence than looking at only one or two. 4How does the margin of error apply to subgroups? Generally, the reported margin of error for a poll applies to estimates that use the whole sample (e.g., all adults, all registered voters or all likely voters who were surveyed). But polls often report on subgroups, such as young people, white men or Hispanics. Because survey estimates on subgroups of the population have fewer cases, their margins of error are larger - in some cases much larger. A simple random sample of 1,067 cases has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for estimates of overall support for individual candidates. For a subgroup such as Hispanics, who make up about 15% of the U.S. adult population, the sample size would be about 160 cases if represented proportionately. This would mean a margin of error of plus or minus 8 percentage points for individual candidates and a margin of error of plus or minus 16 percentage points for the difference between two candidates. In practice, some demographic subgroups such as minorities and young people are less likely to respond to surveys and need to be "weighted up," meaning that estimates for these groups often rely on even smaller sample sizes. Some polling organizations, including Pew Research Center, report margins of error for subgroups or make them available upon request. 5What determines the amount of error in survey estimates? Many poll watchers know that the margin of error for a survey is driven primarily by the sample size. But there are other factors that also affect the variability of estimates. For public opinion polls, a particularly important contributor is weighting. Without adjustment, polls tend to overrepresent people who are easier to reach and underrepresent those types of people who are harder to interview. In order to make their results more representative pollsters weight their data so that it matches the population - usually based on a number of demographic measures. Weighting is a crucial step for avoiding biased results, but it also has the effect of making the margin of error larger. Statisticians call this increase in variability the design effect. It is important that pollsters take the design effect into account when they report the margin of error for a survey. If they do not, they are claiming more precision than their survey actually warrants. Members of the American Association for Public Opinion Research's Transparency Initiative (including Pew Research Center) are required to disclose how their weighting was performed and whether or not the reported margin of error accounts for the design effect. It is also important to bear in mind that the sampling variability described by the margin of error is only one of many possible sources of error that can affect survey estimates. Different survey firms use different procedures or question wording that can affect the results. Certain kinds of respondents may be less likely to be sampled or respond to some surveys (for instance, people without internet access cannot take online surveys). Respondents might not be candid about controversial opinions when talking to an interviewer on the phone, or might answer in ways that present themselves in a favorable light (such as claiming to be registered to vote when they are not). For election surveys in particular, estimates that look at "likely voters" rely on models and predictions about who will turn out to vote that may also introduce error. Unlike sampling error, which can be calculated, these other sorts of error are much more difficult to quantify and are rarely reported. But they are present nonetheless, and polling consumers should keep them in mind when interpreting survey results. Topics

Civil liberties in public schools? Case Standards?

Civil liberties in public schools: American public schools proudly teach students that our system of government protects human rights, including the freedom of religion and conscience; freedom of expression; freedom from arbitrary detentions, unreasonable searches, and cruel punishments; and fair governmental procedures before curtailing any important rights. Yet in these classrooms students are subject to more direct and palpable government control than any adult who is not enlisted in the military, incarcerated, or civilly committed. They are not free to leave the room without permission. Teachers decide when students may speak or be silent and which subjects they must speak about. Rules for proper conduct go far beyond the ordinary obligations imposed by civil and criminal law, and punishments for misconduct are imposed without the protections of a civil or criminal trial. Much of that control is necessary. Adults may choose whatever subject to discuss and when, but for an algebra class to serve its intended purpose, the teacher must instruct the students to stop talking about subjects of their choice and concentrate instead on the equations that are on the board. Government-operated schools therefore must impose at least some re-strictions on the rights of students that could never be imposed on the public at large. Case Standards: As a result, court decisions considering the rights of public school students sometimes uncomfortably resemble court decisions about the rights of prisoners. The asserted right will be found to exist, but in a weakened form that must yield to the essential needs of the institution. "Prison walls do not form a barrier separating prison inmates from the protections of the Constitution," said Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 84 (1987), and students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate" opined Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969), yet in both settings a person might face punishment for asserting those freedoms in the wrong ways. Because students' individual rights may be whittled to their core at school, the rights that courts will recognize in that context are strongly held indeed. It is no accident that the separate-but-equal standard of Plessy v. Ferguson met its demise in a case about public schools, Brown v. Board of Education. Because schools are designed to replicate society's values for succeeding generations, some school cases force us to ask which values we most want to perpetuate.

Why is defamation law constantly evolving and difficult in our system?

Defamation laws protect people whose careers, reputations, finances and/or health have been damaged by untrue, harmful statements. However, defamation law often intersects with laws protecting the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, the English law of Defamation is not he deliberate product of any period. It is a mass that has grown by aggregation, with very little intervention from legislation, and special and peculiar circumstances have from time to time. shaped its varying course. The result is that perhaps no other branch of the law is open to. criticism for its doubts and difficulties, its meaningless and grotesque anomalies. Defamation lawsuits are challenging and difficult to win in our system because they require a lot of fact-finding. It may require experts to testify on your behalf about the psychological and emotional harm you've suffered. Unless your lawyer is working on a contingency basis, it can also be quite costly.

"Right to Die" arguments and constitutional issues

Does the Constitution protect a 'right to die'? October 2, 2015 | by Joshua Waimberg National Constitution Center California Governor Jerry Brown has a decision to make. Before October 7, he must decide whether or not to sign the End of Life Option Act into law. The bill, which would allow people in the advanced stages of terminal illness to obtain a lethal dose of drugs from their doctors, was passed by the California legislature on September 11. If Gov. Brown signs it into law, it would make California only the fifth state to legalize the so-called "right to die." The legislation follows the story of Brittany Maynard, the terminally ill woman who rose to national prominence prior to her death. The concept of assisted suicide is contentious, and both sides of the debate are passionate in their beliefs. But is the right to die protected by the Constitution? In 1997, the Supreme Court took up the matter in Washington v. Glucksberg. In that case, Dr. Harold Glucksberg and a group of practicing physicians challenged Washington State's ban on assisted suicide. They argued that assisted suicide and the right to die was a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The district court agreed with them, saying that Washington's ban placed an undue burden on the constitutional right to exercise the personal choice by a mentally competent, terminally ill adult to commit physician-assisted suicide. The Ninth Circuit affirmed this decision, but the Supreme Court disagreed. In a decision written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the Court rejected the idea that the right to assisted suicide was a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause. To do so, the Court followed its "established method of substantive due process analysis." First, the Court asked whether the right was objectively, deeply rooted in the United States' history and tradition, and "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty." The Court tracked a detailed historical analysis and found that the right had no place in the country's tradition or history, given the fact that assisted suicide had been consistently rejected in the past and was banned in a large number of states. Second, the Court's analysis required a "careful description" of the asserted fundamental liberty interest. The Court found that, in this case, that description was lacking. The Court decided to define the interest itself, determining that the right at issue was "a right to commit suicide which itself includes a right to assistance in doing so." The Court then discussed how this specific, asserted right had no place in the country's traditions. To decide otherwise, the majority said, would force them to "reverse centuries of legal doctrine and practice, and strike down the considered policy choice of almost every state."

Why did the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) ultimately fail?

Fifty years ago today, the U.S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment, following the lead of the House of Representatives and paving the way for it to become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Yet the ERA was never added to the Constitution - because Congress also set a deadline. It said 38, or 3/4 of the states, had to ratify the proposed amendment by 1979. It later extended the deadline to 1982. So when in 2020 Virginia became the final state needed to ratify the ERA, it was almost 40 years too late. Or was it? High school Rosie Couture didn't think so. When she learned about the ERA a few years ago, she couldn't believe it wasn't already in the Constitution. "At first I was just shocked, and then I was really angry," she said. Couture co-foundedGeneration Ratify, a youth-led organization to advance gender equality legislation. She believes Generation Ratify's advocacy work made a difference in Virginia. "We were protesting outside of the Capitol, delivering letters, spamming voicemails," she said. Even with the Virginia vote two years ago, victory may be a long way off. Five states have tried to rescind their ratification, though it's not clear from the Constitution if this is possible. There are people suing to push the ERA through, and those pushing to have it blocked. The Trump Justice Department advised that because the deadline had passed, Congress needed to go back to the drawing board. But last year, the House passed a joint resolution to remove the deadline, which President Joe Biden says he supports. As written, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment is a pretty simple idea. Alice Paul, an American Quaker suffragist, first introduced the ERA to Congress in 1923. She rewrote the text in 1943 and the language remains to this day: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

Be able to discern freedom of the press protections - Doctrine of Prior Restraint.

Freedom of the press protections gives the right to publish and disseminate information, thoughts, and opinions without restraint or censorship as guaranteed under the First Amendment to the U.S. ConstitutionIn. Without a free press, a democracy cannot exist. In fact, the press is a great medium that conveys the truth to people. However, it cannot function fully if the press is not free. Near v. Minnesota (1931), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Minnesota Public Nuisance Abatement Law that barred the publication of malicious or defamatory materials. County prosecutor Floyd Olson, who later became governor of Minnesota, had convinced a county judge in 1927 to issue a gag order against journalists Jay Near and Howard Guilford under the Minnesota law. The two journalists had written several contentious articles in the publication Saturday Press accusing Olson and other local politicians of colluding with gangsters. Near appealed the case and ultimately won in a 5-4 decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Minnesota law violated the First Amendment. The case is significant for two reasons. First, it established a judicial precedent for the no prior restraint doctrine. Second, it reinforced the incremental application, or incorporation, of the Bill of Rights to the states.

Texas v. Johnson - symbolic speech definition?

Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag outside of the convention center where the 1984 Republican National Convention was being held in Dallas, Texas. Johnson burned the flag to protest the policies of President Ronald Reagan. He was arrested and charged with violating a Texas statute that prevented the desecration of a venerated object, including the American flag, if such action were likely to incite anger in others. A Texas court tried and convicted Johnson. He appealed, arguing that his actions were "symbolic speech" protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his case. The majority of the Court, according to Justice William Brennan, agreed with Johnson and held that flag burning constitutes a form of "symbolic speech" that is protected by the First Amendment. The majority noted that freedom of speech protects actions that society may find very offensive, but society's outrage alone is not justification for suppressing free speech. The high court agreed that symbolic speech - no matter how offensive to some - is protected under the First Amendment.

Gun rights cases and inconsistency arguments

On June 23, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, overturning a New York gun safety law. The Court ruled that New York's law requiring a license to carry concealed weapons in public places is unconstitutional. Notably, the overturned law didn't exist in isolation; it was similar to laws in seven other states, the combined populations of which account for over a quarter of the people in the United States. The Bruen decision threatens those laws — in fact, Maryland suspended a similar law on July 8, just two weeks after the decision. Two days after SCOTUS's ruling, President Biden signed bipartisan gun safety legislation, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, into law. The Legal Question in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen Bruen is the first major Second Amendment decision from the Supreme Court since District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, which enshrined the right to have a handgun for self-defense in the home. In Heller, the Court specified that some gun regulations were permissible, including bans on weapons in what the Court termed "sensitive places" like schools and churches. The Bruen decision threatens [other] laws — in fact, Maryland suspended a similar law on July 8, just two weeks after the decision. The Supreme Court held oral arguments for Bruen in November 2021, with plaintiffs challenging the 100-year-old New York state handgun licensing law requiring individuals to show proper cause before they can be licensed to carry a concealed weapon in public. Plaintiffs argued that the law violates the Second Amendment. Defending the handgun licensing law, New York argued that the right to carry a weapon for self-defense outside the home is not absolute.

Be able to describe the importance and limitations of the doctrine of Selective Incorporation.

Overview While the Bill of Rights expressly protects citizens' rights and liberties against infringements by the federal government, it does not explicitly mention infringement or regulation of rights by state governments. Over a succession of rulings, the Supreme Court has established the doctrine of selective incorporation to limit state regulation of civil rights and liberties, holding that many protections of the Bill of Rights apply to every level of government, not just the federal. Key terms TermDefinitionDue processthe legal requirement that an individual's rights must be respected by a state or government; protected at the federal level by the Fifth Amendment, and at the state level by the FourteenthFourteenth Amendmentexplicitly guarantees certain rights against infringement by states, including citizenship, due process, and equal protection for all citizens; before the Amendment's 1868 adoption, these rights were protected at the Federal level by the Bill of Rights, but not explicitly at the state levelFundamental rightsrights and immunities protected by the Bill of Rights and interpreted by the Supreme Court as "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,"11start superscript, 1, end superscript and therefore protected against state governments in addition to the federal governmentIncrementalismthe process of incorporating specific rights and provisions of the Bill of Rights to the state level on a case-by-case basis; compare to total incorporationTotal incorporationa doctrine that applies all the guarantees of the Bill of Rights to the state level without exception; this doctrine has never been adopted by a Supreme Court majority opinion, although several dissenting justices have advocated for it Cases to know McDonald v. Chicago (2010) - The first case in which the Second Amendment right to "keep and bear Arms" was incorporated to the states.22squared The City of Chicago passed a handgun ban in 1982; Chicago resident Otis McDonald filed a lawsuit challenging the ban in 2008 on the basis that he needed a handgun for self-defense. The Court declared the handgun ban unconstitutional by a 5-4 majority, ruling that the Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defence is fundamental, and therefore incorporated to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. Roe v. Wade (1973) - Norma McCorvey, called by the alias Jane Roe in the court proceedings, wished to terminate her pregnancy but found she could not do so safely or legally in the state of Texas. In the resulting Supreme Court case, the Court ruled that a woman's decision to have an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy was protected by the constitutional right to privacy which is incorporated to the states, and that it was therefore unconstitutional for a state to criminalize all abortions. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969) - Iowa teenagers Mary Beth Tinker, her brother John, and their friend Christopher Eckhardt were suspended from their public high school for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. In the resulting case, the Supreme Court ruled that the armbands were a form of symbolic speech, which is protected by the First Amendment and applicable to all levels of government, and therefore the school had violated the students' First Amendment rights. Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) The Supreme Court incorporated the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel at the state level, ruling that state courts were responsible for providing a lawyer to a defendant who could not afford one. Key takeaways Limits on state power: Using the doctrine of selective incorporation, the Supreme Court has ruled that many provisions of the Bill of Rights apply to the states. This represents a limiting of state power by federal oversight; any state attempt to regulate individual rights could potentially be ruled unconstitutional by the Court. To incorporate or not to incorporate? When deciding whether a right is incorporated to the states (and all levels of government), the Court considers whether the right is "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty", or otherwise "fundamental". If the right is fundamental, it applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. Not every right or provision of the Bill of Rights has been incorporated to the states; including those that have never been challenged in the Supreme Court, and those that the Court has specifically ruled non-fundamental, such as the Fifth Amendment's double jeopardy protection. Individual freedom and public safety: The tension between public safety considerations and individual rights plays out at all levels of government, and is frequently a factor in cases in which the Court considers selective incorporation. For example, McDonald v Chicago came about because of a city-level handgun ban motivated by public safety, but the Court's ruling gave primacy to individual rights and reversed the ban.

Status of content responsibility by social media platforms

Penn Review Article Dec 21, 2021 The Social Responsibility of Social Media Platforms Karis Stephen Brown examines the law's interaction with social media in the United States, flagging the Supreme Court's treatment of social media as identical to its treatment of print media. In both cases, the Court gives great deference to the speech protections of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. That deference means that the content of online communications remains largely unregulated. Congress has followed the Supreme Court's lead and enacted Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 offers internet service providers immunity from liability for content posted by third parties on their platforms. Brown notes that courts apply this liability shield broadly. Section 230 has protected providers from claims pertaining to intentional infliction of emotional distress, terrorism support, and defamation. Brown explains that social media platform users implicitly rely on the wide protections of Section 230. Without these liability safeguards, the ways in which users interact with these online spaces would be limited, as platforms would constrain users' ability to comment freely on content or post product reviews. The Section 230 shield, however, stirs controversy on both ends of the political spectrum. Conservative critics push back against Section 230 for stifling viewpoint neutrality, calling out social platforms for censoring political perspectives. On the other hand, Democratic lawmakerscriticize Section 230 for creating a lack of platform accountability when it comes topics such as the spread of falsehoods and child exploitation. Despite calls for change to Section 230, Brown says that the reform of liability allocation could lead to problems with "de facto" government regulation of speech: The government would be able to "deputize" platforms into creating content-based censorship. If Congress removed the immunity law, this would encourage online platforms to put content through a rigorous moderation process to minimize risk. According to Brown, that process would force platforms to draw distinctions on speech based on its substance—which could lead to over-blocking, over-censorship, and impermissible government interference on speech.

Case Standards for assembly freedoms and exclusions

Right to Assemble / Right to Petition The right to assemble allows people to gather for peaceful and lawful purposes. Implicit within this right is the right to association and belief. The Supreme Court has expressly recognized that a right to freedom of association and belief is implicit in the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedom of assembly is recognized as a human right under article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This implicit right is limited to the right to associate for First Amendment purposes. It does not include a right of social association. The government may prohibit people from knowingly associating in groups that engage and promote illegal activities. The right to associate also prohibits the government from requiring a group to register or disclose its members or from denying government benefits on the basis of an individual's current or past membership in a particular group. There are exceptions to this rule where the Court finds that governmental interests in disclosure/registration outweigh interference with First Amendment rights. The government may also, generally, not compel individuals to express themselves, hold certain beliefs, or belong to particular associations or groups. The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances guarantees people the right to ask the government to provide relief for a wrong through litigation or other governmental action. It works with the right of assembly by allowing people to join together and seek change from the government. Case Standards - Assembly Freedoms: Case Standards - Assembly Exclusions

Proof standard for sexual harassment

Sexual Harassment It is unlawful to harass a person (an applicant or employee) because of that person's sex. Harassment can include "sexual harassment" or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. Harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can include offensive remarks about a person's sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general. Both victim and the harasser can be either a woman or a man, and the victim and harasser can be the same sex. Although the law doesn't prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted). The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer.

Fraternities and Sororities - inclusion and discrimination standards

Single-Gender Organizations Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in educational programs and activities at the university unless such programs and activities are specifically exempt from the law. The university is required to be in compliance with the provisions of Title IX. Therefore, compliance with Title IX is a condition to be a registered student organization at the university. Since passage of this law and the publication of the implementing regulations, the U. S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights has evolved a rather clear set of criteria for determining when single sex organizations are exempt from the provisions of Title IX. The criteria are as follows: the organization must have tax-exempt status under Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code; members must be limited to students, staff or faculty at Stockton University; the organization must be a "social fraternity" as defined by the Department of Education. The Department of Education defines a "social fraternity" as a group that can answer "no" to all the following questions: Is the organization's membership limited to persons pursuing or having interest in a particular field of study, profession or academic discipline? Is the membership limited to individuals who have a high level of achievement in scholarship or any other endeavor? Are the members permitted to hold membership in other fraternities or sororities at the university? If a group answers "yes" to any of the questions, it is not a "social fraternity" and is not exempt from the requirements of Title IX. Therefore, the organization must accept members of both sexes. Questions regarding this policy can be directed to staff in the Office of Student Development. Transgender Membership Fraternities and sororities are private membership organizations and therefore have their own membership selection practices. According to the U.S. Department of Education, as long as a fraternal organization meets the express requirements of Title IX, "its membership practices are exempt from Title IX regardless of whether that organization admits transgender students." This reaffirms First Amendment principles and fraternal organizations' right to associate and to determine its membership, including the right to make decisions regarding transgender students. Nationally, many fraternal organizations, including ones with chapters on our campus, have welcomed transgender members, some adding trans-inclusive language to their membership selection clauses.

School law and expression - Tinker v. Des Moines and Morse v. Fredrick standards?

The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Free speech protects artistic expression. And it may apply to what students wear to school, when they use clothing or jewelry to send a message. Freedom of religion, also guaranteed under the First Amendment, can overlap with freedom of expression. Students have a constitutional right to pray on their own at public school or express their faith in other ways, as long as that expression does not: violate other students' rights cause a disturbance get in the way of classwork, or appear to have the school's official approval Mary Beth Tinker was a 13-year-old junior high school student in December 1965 when she and a group of students decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), the Supreme Court ruled that public school officials cannot censor student expression unless they can reasonably forecast that the speech will substantially disrupt school activities or invade the rights of others. The case, Morse v. Frederick, concerned the rights of a public school student to unfurl a banner reading "Bong hits 4 Jesus" at a school-sponsored event held off school grounds. In Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007), the Supreme Court ruled that it is not a denial of the First Amendment right to free speech for public school officials to censor student speech that they reasonably believe encourages illegal drug use.

How do we test for Establishment Clause violation?

Courts use the endorsement test to determine whether the government impermissibly endorses or disapproves of religion in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The test is often used in cases involving public displays of religious symbols. There must be a secular purpose, the primary effect must not be the aid or inhibition of religion, and there must be no excessive entanglement. If any of these three requirements are not met, the law violates the Establishment Clause.

Resegregation as a modern trend in public schools

It was 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Educationthat separate but equal schools were unconstitutional. The landmark decision put an end to legal segregation, but 60 years later, racial divides are back on the rise inside America's public school classrooms. So what happened? Changing demographics is one factor at play, while another has been a string of controversial court rulings that have made it easier for states to win release from federal integration orders. For many school districts, this has meant a return to levels of integration last seen during the Johnson administration. Here is a brief overview of the landscape: 1. Gains achieved by black students in the south are gone In the wake of the Brown decision, the percentage of black students in majority white southern schools went from zero to a peak of 43.5 percent in 1988. But those changes have reversed in recent years, with data from UCLA's Civil Rights Project showing that by 2011 that figure was back to 23.2 percent, just below where it stood in 1968. The UCLA researchers attribute the decline to legal attacks on desegregation orders under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, as well as the 1991 decision in Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell. By a 5-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that a school district can be freed from an injunction to desegregate if it can demonstrate compliance with the order and also show that it will not "return to its former ways." The south today is still the most integrated region in the nation for black students, but the trend has increasingly been away from integration. As the Civil Right Project has warned, "the direction of change ... suggests that things will continue to worsen." 2. Court oversight increasingly faded during the 2000s Between 1990 and 2009, courts released 45 percent of school districts under court oversight, according to research from Stanford University's Center for Education Policy Analysis. The nationwide study, which focused on districts with at least 2,000 students, found that the pace of releases went from about seven per year in the 1990s, to roughly 15 per year during the 2000s. The year with the most releases was 1998, when 21 schools in Indiana alone were removed from oversight. 3. Segregation tends to rise without court oversight One way researchers have measured integration is by turning to what's called the "dissimilarity index." The scale runs from 0 to 1, with 0 showing a school with balanced integration and 1 representing complete segregation. When the Stanford researchers looked at what happens when districts leave court oversight, they found schools typically climb back toward 1, or more segregation. Schools released from integration plans saw the gulf between whites and blacks grow by 24 percent after 10 years as compared to schools still under court order. The split between white students and Latinos grew by 10 percent after a decade. This is not to say that segregation reverts to where it was before Brown v. Board of Education — when the index was at 1 — "but segregation does increase substantially relative to levels attained under the court orders," note the researchers. 4. Integration is struggling to keep up with enrollment trends The widening divide in America's school system has taken place despite a dramatic shift in enrollment trends. Consider that from 1968 to 2011, enrollment among white students fell 28 percent, but grew by 19 percent among black students and a whopping 495 percent among Latinos. By 2011, Latinos had become the most segregated minority group in U.S. schools, even though they accounted for roughly 25 percent of the nation's 48.7 million public school students. The typical Latino student now attends a school that's nearly 57 percent Latino, more segregated than blacks and Asians. 5. Whites have the least exposure to students of other races While Latinos are the most segregated minority group, white children have the least exposure to students of other races, according to the UCLA researchers. Today's typical white student attends a school that is nearly 75 percent white, but only one-eighth Latino and one-twelfth black. Put another way, in a classroom of 30 students, the average white student has 21 white classmates, two black classmates, four Latinos, one Asian and one "other." Conversely, the typical black or Latino student would have eight white classmates and at least 20 minority classmates. 6. Segregation is as much about poverty as it is about race The UCLA research also found strong connections between poverty and segregation, with blacks and Latinos representing more than half of children in schools with the most poverty, and just 11 percent of students in the least impoverished schools. For many black and Latino children, this can often mean less qualified teachers, as well as shoddier facilities and materials. "In many respects, the schools serving white and Asian students and those serving black and Latino students represent two different worlds," say the researchers. 7. Integration boosts the odds of high school graduation Integration doesn't just mean access to better schools, it can also mean a better chance of earning a degree. Rucker Johnson, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, has studied the life trajectories of students born between 1945 and 1970, focusing on the effects that exposure to court-ordered desegregation had on their lives. In one study, he found that for every year a black student attended an integrated school, their likelihood of graduating went up 2 percentage points. The longer that student stayed in school, the greater his odds. (In the chart below, the vertical axis represents a student's probability of graduating, based on Johnson's models). Johnson found that the difference is tied to the fact that schools under court supervision benefit from higher per-pupil spending and smaller student-teacher ratios. 8. Integrated schools can lead to a healthier financial future Another benefit of attending a school under court oversight is higher wages later in life, and a smaller chance of experiencing poverty, according to Johnson. His research found that the average effect among blacks of a five-year exposure to court-ordered desegregation was a 15 percent increase in wages. That probability, represented below along the vertical axis, amounted to an extra $5,900 in annual family income, and an 11-percentage point decline in yearly incidences of poverty. Johnson also found that while desegregation led to clearly positive outcomes for blacks, it caused no statistically significant harm for whites.

Challenges to religion in public school law

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia/case/98/public-schools-and-religion Case Categories: Public Schools and Religion Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) ended devotional exercises in public schools because the First Amendment forbade the recognition of one religion over... Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet (1994) said a school district created for disabled children of a religious sect violated the... Board of Education of the City of Cincinnati v. Minor (1872) Board of Education v. Minor (1872), a state supreme court decision, preceded later First Amendment debates in the Supreme Court about religious instruction in... Board of Education of the Westside Community Schools v. Mergens (1990) In Board of Education of the Westside Community Schools v. Mergens (1990) the Court upheld the Equal Access Act, which barred religious discrimination against... Chamberlin v. Dade County Board of Public Instruction (1964) Chamberlin v. Dade County Board of Public Instruction (1964) struck down Bible readings and prayers in the public schools based on First Amendment court... Cole v. Oroville Union High School District (2000) Cole v. Oroville Union High School District (9th Cir. 2000) used the coercion test to deny students' prayer at graduation because it could violate the First... Commonwealth v. Cooke (Mass.) (1859) Commonwealth v. Cooke (Mass. 1859) involved a student who refused to read a King James Bible. The First Amendment which protects such rights was not yet applied... Donahoe v. Richards (Maine Supreme Court) (1854) In Donahoe v. Richards (1854), the Maine Supreme Court considered a 15-year-old Roman Catholic girl's expulsion from public school for refusing to read the King... Elmbrook School District v. Doe (2014) The Court refused to hear Elmbrook School District v. Doe (2014), in which a circuit court said a graduation in a nondenominational church violated the First... Engel v. Vitale (1962) Engel v. Vitale (1962) ruled that school-sponsored prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment even though participation in the prayer was voluntary... Good News Club v. Milford Central School (2001) Good News Club v. Milford Central School decided that school districts cannot prohibit First Amendment free speech of groups seeking access to the district's... Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education (1948 ) Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education (1948) overturned an arrangement whereby public schools provided religious training during regular school hours... Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District (1993) Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches School District (1993) said that a law banning a religious group from using a public school to show a religious film violated... Lee v. Weisman (1992) Lee v. Weisman (1992) ruled that public schools violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment when they lead students in public prayer at school... Nurre v. Whitehead (2010) Nurre v. Whitehead (2010) involved a student, who alleged her First Amendment rights were violated when the band could not perform a religious instrumental at... Pfeiffer v. Board of Education (1898) Pfeiffer v. Board of Education (1898) illustrates developments in the states regarding religious exercises in public schools, before the First Amendment was... Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000) In Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, the Court ruled that a school policy of beginning football games with student-led prayer violated the First... State ex rel. Weiss v. City of Edgerton (Wisc.) (1890) Weiss v. City of Edgerton (Wisc. 1890) prohibited Bible readings in public schools, relying on the state constitution before the First Amendment was applied to... Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) Wallace v. Jaffree (1985) struck down a state law requiring a minute of silence in public schools. The Court said the law had a religious purpose and violated... Widmar v. Vincent (1981) Widmar v. Vincent (1981) said that prohibiting religious use of the University of Missouri's buildings while allowing secular use violated the First Amendment... Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) addressed the First Amendment right of free exercise of religion in allowing parents to withdraw their children from school for... Zorach v. Clauson (1952) Zorach v. Clauson (1952) said the released time policy of New York violated neither the free exercise nor establishment clause of the First Amendment...

What is the current standard for inflammatory expression - fighting words

Fighting words are words meant to incite violence such that they may not be protected free speech under the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court first defined them in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire (1942) as words which "by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."

Coming Apart - 50 year trend and the growing economic gap.

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 is a 2012 book about class stratification of white Americans by Charles Murray, a political scientist and W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.[1] Overview[edit] Charles Murray describes what he sees as the economic divide and moral bifurcation of white Americans that has occurred since 1960. Murray describes diverging trends between poor and upper middle class white Americans in the half century after the death of John F. Kennedy. He focuses on white Americans to argue that economic decline in that period was not experienced solely by minorities, whom he brings into his argument in the last few chapters of the book. He argues that class strain has cleaved white Americans into two distinct, highly segregated strata: "an upper class, defined by educational attainment, and a new lower class, characterized by the lack of it. Murray also posits that the new [white] 'lower class' is less industrious, less likely to marry and raise children in a two-parent household, and more politically and socially disengaged."[2] Additionally, Murray writes of several differences he sees forming between and causing two emerging classes—the New Upper Class and the New Lower class—among which are differences in or lack thereof in regard to religiosity, work ethic, industriousness, family, etc. Murray goes on to provide evidence that religiosity, work ethic, industriousness, family, etc., have either remained strong or have weakened minimally in the New Upper Class, whereas these same attributes have either weakened substantially or have become almost nonexistent in the New Lower Class. Much of his argument is centered on a notion of self-selective sorting that began in the 1960s and 1970s, when he argues that cognitive ability became the essential predictor of professional and financial success, and people overwhelmingly began marrying others in the same cognitive stratum and living in areas surrounded largely by others in that same stratum, leading to not only an exacerbation of existing economic divides, but an unprecedented socio-cultural divide that had not existed before in America. The broad facts of income inequality over the past seven decades are easily summarized: The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity.Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s.The gap between those high up the income ladder and those on the middle and lower rungs — while substantial — did not change much during this period. Beginning in the 1970s, economic growth slowed and the income gap widened.Income growth for households in the middle and lower parts of the distribution slowed sharply, while incomes at the top continued to grow strongly.The concentration of income at the very top of the distribution rose to levels last seen nearly a century ago, during the "Roaring Twenties." Wealth — the value of a household's property and financial assets, minus the value of its debts — is much more highly concentrated than income. The best survey data show that the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent rose from 30 percent in 1989 to 39 percent in 2016, while the share held by the bottom 90 percent fell from 33 percent to 23 percent.

American Voter Turnout Obstacles

Legislators in states that have a long track record of voter suppression often implement laws and engage in activities that make it harder for certain segments of the population to vote. Here are some of the most common ways voting rights are undermined across the country: 1) Voter ID requirements. Election officials use false claims of rampant voter fraud to justify strict requirements like a photo ID, often aimed at suppressing the votes of people of color and younger voters. Laws requiring a physical street address discriminate against groups that are more likely to have P.O. Box addresses, such as Native Americans living on reservations. 2) Lack of language access. The English-language requirements of the past may be gone, but voting rights groups regularly receive reports that local jurisdictions are not translating materials or offering language assistance as required by law, proving a persistent barrier to increased voting among language minorities in the Asian American and Latino communities. 3) Voter roll purges. Under the guise of reviewing voter rolls to remove duplicate names, the names of deceased individuals, or those with standing felony convictions, officials have undertaken indiscriminate "purges" of voter lists in recent years, deleting millions of eligible voters' names, often with a disproportionate impact on communities of color. 4) Polling place closures/consolidations. A recent USA Today analysis found that election officials have closed thousands of polling places, largely affecting communities of color. For example, in Chicago's Cook County, which has the largest non-Hispanic black population in the country, election administrators closed or moved 95 polling places. 5) Lack of funding for elections. A lack of funding inhibits the ability of localities to manage elections that ensure everyone's vote counts equally. Some of these problems came to the fore during the 2000 presidential election in Florida, where the recount process shined a spotlight on issues ranging from flawed ballot designs to voting machines that overheated and failed. 6) Provisional ballot requirements. Federal law allows voters whose eligibility is in question to use a provisional ballot to be counted once the voter is confirmed eligible. However, localities set their own rules in how many provisional ballots to print and training poll workers on processing them, resulting in eligible voters being turned away or their ballots discounted. 7) Reduced early voting. States and localities have long used early voting to reduce Election Day crunch and open up the process to prospective voters bound by work or other commitments. Faith-based groups have also used early voting for nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts. Recently, officials across the nation have curtailed early voting, largely hitting communities of color. 8) Reduced voting hours. Like limiting early voting, reducing voting hours can make voting less convenient, and even impossible, for many voters. Low-income and working-class people often have less freedom to arrive late or leave early from work, or to take a break from their shifts in the middle of the day. Parents with inflexible childcare arrangements can be similarly impacted. 9) Poorly trained poll workers. Poll workers need good training to follow the right policies like properly checking IDs, giving language assistance, identifying voter intimidation, and offering provisional ballots. Yet a lack of funding, coupled with a lack of commitment to making voting welcoming and convenient, means poll workers are poorly equipped to do their jobs. 9) Partisan election administrators. Our country's highly decentralized election system hands the responsibility for managing elections to state and local administrators, some of them partisan officials with a clear interest in election outcomes favorable to their parties and candidates. Too often, this results in efforts to suppress the votes of groups that might be viewed as opponents. 10) Creation of at-large local offices to dilute minority vote. An at-large election covers voters across a city or county, in contrast to smaller district elections, which can often result in higher representation for people of color since votes are not diluted by an area-wide population. As a result, some officials create at-large districts to limit the influence of minority communities. Source: Carnegie Corporation of NY: https://www.carnegie.org/our-work/article/11-barriers-voting/

Free-Exercise Clause application - Yoder v. Wisconsin.

The Free Exercise Clause protects citizens' right to practice their religion as they please, so long as the practice does not run afoul of a "public morals" or a "compelling" governmental interest. Yoder, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 15, 1972, ruled (7-0) that Wisconsin's compulsory school attendance law was unconstitutional as applied to the Amish (primarily members of the Old Order Amish Mennonite Church), because it violated the parents' constitutional right to direct the religious upbringing of their children and their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. It prevented the state of Wisconsin from compelling the respondents to send their children to formal secondary school beyond the age of 14.

What is the current standard for determining obscenity standards? Pornography test?

The Miller Test is the primary legal test for determining whether expression constitutes obscenity. It is named after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Miller v. California (1973). In that case, Melvin Miller mailed five unsolicited brochures to the manager of a restaurant and his mother containing explicit pictures and drawings of men and women engaged in a variety of sexual activities. Mr. Miller was prosecuted for violating a California law that made it a misdemeanor to knowingly distribute obscene material. These guidelines are the three prongs of the Miller test. They are: (1) whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Religious liberty laws arguments and balancing issues

WHAT IS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM EXACTLY? The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that everyone in the United States has the right to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all. Our country's founders -- who were of different religious backgrounds themselves -- knew the best way to protect religious liberty was to keep the government out of religion. So they created the First Amendment -- to guarantee the separation of church and state. This fundamental freedom is a major reason why the U.S. has managed to avoid a lot of the religious conflicts that have torn so many other nations apart. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits government from encouraging or promoting ("establishing") religion in any way. That's why we don't have an official religion of the United States. This means that the government may not give financial support to any religion. That's why many school voucher programs violate the Establishment Clause -- because they give taxpayers' money to schools that promote religion. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment gives you the right to worship or not as you choose. The government can't penalize you because of your religious beliefs.

Gender Pay Gap - laws, complexity, glass-ceiling realities?

When the Equal Pay Act ("EPA") became law in 1963, women earned approximately 59 cents for every dollar a man earned.1 Women today are earning roughly 80 cents on the dollar.2 While the past 50 years have seen extraordinary progress for women, the persistence of a 20 percent gender pay gap, coupled with the rapidly growing population of women in the workforce, has caused the government to reinvigorate its efforts to enforce and strengthen pay discrimination laws. While eliminating pay bias is important, focusing heavily on perceived employer bias obscures a much more complex web of factors contributing to the problem of pay differences between men and women. Indeed, the pay gap measures only the difference in average earnings between all men and all women; it is not a proxy for pay bias—i.e., the failure to pay women equal pay for equal work.3 The pay gap says nothing about gender disparities within specific professions or positions. It fails to account for differences in chosen profession, education, work patterns, and work experience, among other factors.4 The pay gap is also driven in large part by the glass ceiling—the barrier keeping qualified women from rising to the upper rungs of the professional ladder.5Women remain significantly underrepresented among the top ranks of business, finance, academia, and government.6 Studies consistently show that the concentration of women in low-paying jobs, and occupational selections—the actual position a woman selects within an industry—are two key drivers of the pay gap.7 Studies also demonstrate that while women make less money than men, they also work fewer hours each year, have more work interruptions, and spend more time doing unpaid work than their male counterparts. These work patterns, which contribute to lower wages for women, also inhibit women's rise to highest levels of their professions—particularly given the increasing proportion of high-earning individuals who work 50 hours per week or more.8 Tackling the pay gap means understanding the glass ceiling as well.

Liberal position and debate over equality of opportunity versus equality of result

Equality of opportunity: Liberals believe that the less people are worried about being able to afford basic needs will have opportunities to succeed (examples liberals who believe in sufficiency of opportunity tend to want to spend more on health care and education for the poor. They believe that making pre-kindergarten universal will help close the gap on an important inequity in early childhood. They believe that the less children or their parents need to worry about staying afloat, the more they'll be free to work to get ahead. Equality of result: Government spending and assistance on basic needs (education, health care, welfare/safety net for the poor) results in fewer people that need government assistance long term.

Warren Court defendant's rights protections?

The Warren Court Supreme Court in 1953 Unique within American history, the period in which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (1953 to 1969) witnessed an aggressive court unafraid to tackle controversial issues. An activist court that did much to expand the rights of the individual and the power of the federal government to enforce civil rights legislation, it changed the way Americans today perceive their relationship with their government. Not since then has the Supreme Court wielded so much power in shaping American culture, and Earl Warren is remembered as one of the most influential Supreme Court Justices in American history. Due Process Miranda Rights Under Miranda v. Arizona, all accused persons must be informed of their rights when they are arrested. These rights have become known as "Miranda Rights." A typical reading of someone's Miranda Rights would state: You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. One of the many areas in which the Warren court expanded civil rights was in guaranteeing due process of the law to all citizens. Prior to handing down such rulings as Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), indigent or minority accused persons often found themselves with no legal counsel to defend them in court and in many cases were uninformed regarding their rights. Gideon v. Wainwright ruled that states must provide attorneys at state expense for accused persons unable to procure their own legal defense. Similarly, Miranda v. Arizona expanded the rights of the accused by mandating that they must be informed of their rights upon arrest. Both of these decisions came at a time when it had become clear that minorities were often left at a disadvantage in the legal system due to ignorance and poverty. These rulings were intended to right these wrongs. Play "Match the Supreme Court Decision" to test your knowledge of the most important decisions of the period. One Man, One Vote Other outstanding rulings of the Warren Court era dealt with the "one man, one vote" principle. Rulings such as Baker v. Carr (1962), Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), and Reynolds v. Sims (1964) attacked political inequities. These three cases established the idea that the legislative districts of both the House of Representatives and both houses for state legislatures must be of equal and proportional size regarding population. The Reynolds ruling read, "Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests." These cases were intended to enforce relatively equal representation for both urban and rural constituents. The effect of these rulings was to trickle down to impact even city districting as well. Freedom of Religion Another individual right expanded by the Supreme Court during this period was that of freedom of religion. In 1963, Sherbert v. Verner dealt with a woman who had been fired from her long-standing job because it conflicted with her religious beliefs. She was denied unemployment compensation as a result and took her case to court. The court ruled that under the First Amendment, if an employee can prove their religious conflicts, they are protected by law in cases of discrimination. Religious freedom was also put to the test in the case of free exercise in the public schools. Engel v. Vitale (1962) ruled that it was illegal for the states to require official school prayers to be recited by the students. Abington Township School District v. Schempp (1963) declared that school-sponsored Bible readings were unconstitutional. Overall, the Warren court did much to expand the civil liberties Americans enjoy and exercise today, in part because no court had ever pushed the issues of racial discrimination, the rights of the accused, or religious freedom so forcefully to the forefront of American society. Although President Johnson's Great Society agenda did much in the way of pushing civil rights legislation into law, it was the Warren Court that set the tone for the decade in terms of the government's role in Americans' lives. It provided muscle to back up Johnson's talk by providing cause for the government to step in with force if necessary in the name of protecting individual rights.

Macrosociological communities and cyber-balkanization examples

The term cyberbalkanization2 was first coined in Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson's early article (1996) to describe the information technology-driven division of virtual space into special interest groups. It is later put into the political context as an online phenomenon in which "people seek out only like-minded others and thereby close themselves off from ideological opposition, alternative understandings, and uncomfortable discussions" (Brainard, 2009, p. 598). Sunstein (2008, p. 94) also describes a similar online phenomenon as a group of bloggers living "in echo chambers of their own design" or "in information cocoons." One typical example of cyberbalkanization occurs in the online political debate among English- speaking Americans during presidential elections. Previous results indicate that online discussions fol- low a bipartisan pattern, within which ideologically compatible online users tend to cite and mention each other more frequently (Adamic & Glance, 2005; Conover et al., 2011)3. However, evidence also sug- gests that the segregation of communication according to political ideology on social media is largely issue-dependent, showing that such segregation was seen more often in the discussions of political issues, such as the 2012 presidential debates, but less profound in the public's exchanges on other issues, for example the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing (Barberá et al., 2015).

3 Core American Governing Ideals and the basis of conflict

1. Liberty: Liberty establishes the freedom of our actions, but only if those actions are not detrimental to the freedom of other people. 2. Equality No two people are the same, but they should always be treated equally in the light of the law. There are many minorities in the United States of America, with a different culture, belief, and a way of life, but they all need to have the same fundamental right and be treated the same way. 3. Democracy: Is believed to be the best form of government by many Americans because it is supposed to be governed by people themselves, and the political figures act according to the opinion of the people. One of its most important characteristics is the majority rule.