1,721,137 research outputs found
Practical Equality: Discussion with Author Robert L. Tsai
No full textProfessor Timothy Zick discusses a new book titled Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation, with its author, Professor Robert L. Tsai of American University Washington College of Law. Timothy Zick is the John Marshall Professor of Government and Citizenship at William & Mary Law School. His scholarship has explored a wide variety of constitutional issues, with a special focus on the First Amendment. Robert L. Tsai is Professor of Law at American University and a prize-winning essayist in constitutional law and history. Recorded before a live audience at William & Mary Law School on March 14, 2019. The event was sponsored by the American Constitution Society. Professor Tsai was also a panelist during the annual Bill of Rights Journal Symposium on March 15 & 16, 2019
Constitutional Empiricism: Quasi-Neutral Principles and Constitutional Truths
No full textThe absence of neutrality and objectivity in constitutional decision-making has vexed scholars and courts. In this Article, the author describes and analyzes constitutional empiricism, a trend instituted by the Rehnquist Court, which is characterized by judicial reliance in constitutional review on empirical and scientific conventions and processes. Courts have generally relied upon traditional sources, such as text and history, to interpret consititutional powers and rights. In its search for neutrality and objectivity, however, the Court has recently turned not only to social science and other data, which are fast becoming common sources of interpretation, but also to the precepts and methods of scientific and empirical inquiry. Constitutional empiricism is amethod of constitutional interpretation which seeks to imitate scientific inquiry. Empiricism boasts, for example, the ability to distinguish, by reference to empirical observation, real from sham legislative predicates. It is used to empirically test legislative hypotheses, predictions, theories, and causal claims. Beyond this, empiricism is also manifested in the Court\u27s efforts to quantify normative constitutional provisions as disparate as the DueProcess Clause, the Establishment Clause, and the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, among others. Drawing upon ongoing debates in the philosophy of science discipline, the Author argues that constitutional empiricism does not provide long-sought neutral methods and principles for constitutional interpretation. Empiricism is based upon a host of subjectivechoices that affect not only which questions will be answered empirically, but also the collection, categorization, and ultimate interpretation of data. Thus, the precepts of empiricism do not, as would appear, function as a set of neutral principles. In fact, the Author argues, far from propelling constitutional interpretation into the twenty-first century, empiricism has been utilized, thus far, to draw attention away from a return to the sort of formalism and conceptualism that characterized early eras of constitutional interpretation. More generally, the Author contends that empirical methods are ill-suited to the discovery of constitutional meaning. Because it filters evidence, fails to provide standards for separating good empirical results from bad results, and demands that hypotheses be legally correct, constitutional empiricism does not advance constitutional knowledge in the same manner thatempirical methods advance scientific knowledge. The Author argues that perhaps the most disturbing issue is that finding constitutional truths empirically threatens to further sterilize and compress constitutional discourse
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Falsely Shouting Fire in a Global Theater: Emerging Complexities of Transborder Expression
Full text linkWe have entered an era in which potentially harmful expression can be distributed around the world in an instant. In the emerging global theater, speakers and audiences are connected through new and proliferating media; communicative space and time are compressed to an extraordinary degree; domestic expression can implicate national security and foreign affairs concerns; and a new model of global information dissemination is developing in which speakers are sometimes located beyond the jurisdiction of nations that may be harmed by their communications and disclosures.
This Article examines the First Amendment complexities associated with the dissemination of potentially harmful information in the global theater. These complexities include global dissemination of offensive expression, incitement to unlawful activities abroad, enemy-aiding expression that crosses territorial borders, and global free press concerns. The author argues that traditional First Amendment doctrines and principles ought generally to apply in the global theater. Reliance on marketplace and self-governance principles, application of speech-protective incitement standards, and continued support for an expansive and robust conception of press freedoms will preserve transborder First Amendment liberties in the digital era and allow the global theater to develop and mature. The author urges government officials not to react to potentially dangerous global theater expression by adopting new restrictions on transborder expressive and associational activities; creating new criminal offenses that inhibit transborder information flow; establishing broad penalties relating to transborder commingling and association; resorting to extrajudicial and potentially extralegal penalties for dangerous speakers; or imposing new limits on press freedoms.
In addition to these specific First Amendment issues, the Article also discusses several broader concerns relating to the development of the global theater. The author contends that in the global theater era, it will be critically important to the protection of speech and press liberties that officials and courts act with due regard for the First Amendment\u27s transborder dimension. Moreover, in the global theater, First Amendment justifications should be interpreted to encompass global information flow, cross-border collaboration, and the global spread of democratic principles. More attention must also be paid to the unique legal, professional, ethical, and identity challenges the press will face in the global theater. Finally, the author urges that more careful legal and scholarly attention be given to new restrictions on global information flow, including actions of private intermediaries and nonconventional forms of government censorship
Professional Rights Speech
Full text linkSome regulations of professional-client communications raise important, but sofar largely overlooked, constitutional concerns. Three recent examples of professional speech regulation-restrictions on physician inquiries regarding firearms, reparative therapy bans, and compelled abortion disclosures-highlight an important intersection between professional speech and constitutional rights. In each of the three examples, state regulations implicate a non-expressive constitutional right--the right to bear arms, equality, and abortion. States are actively, sometimes even aggressively, using their licensing authority to limit and structure conversations between professionals and their clients regarding constitutional rights. The author contends that government regulation of professional rights speech should be subjected to heightened First Amendment scrutiny. Many professionals perform critical, but underappreciatedf, u nctions with regard to the recognition and effective exercise of constitutional rights. Moreover, the author contends that the mere fact that the speakers are professionals and the listeners are clients or patients does not extinguish or diminish First Amendment protections or concerns. To the contrary, the examples discussed in the Article demonstrate various reasons, rooted in free speech values, constitutional rights, and professionalism norms for subjecting at least some professional speech regulations to heightened First Amendment scrutiny
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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