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Book part
Publication date: 14 April 2016

Thomas M. Keck and Kevin J. McMahon

From one angle, abortion law appears to confirm the regime politics account of the Supreme Court; after all, the Reagan/Bush coalition succeeded in significantly curtailing the…

Abstract

From one angle, abortion law appears to confirm the regime politics account of the Supreme Court; after all, the Reagan/Bush coalition succeeded in significantly curtailing the constitutional protection of abortion rights. From another angle, however, it is puzzling that the Reagan/Bush Court repeatedly refused to overturn Roe v. Wade. We argue that time and again electoral considerations led Republican elites to back away from a forceful assertion of their agenda for constitutional change. As a result, the justices generally acted within the range of possibilities acceptable to the governing regime but still typically had multiple doctrinal options from which to choose.

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Studies in Law, Politics, and Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-076-3

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Abstract

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Public Morality and the Culture Wars: The Triple Divide
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-722-8

Book part
Publication date: 17 December 2008

David S. Meyer and Suzanne Staggenborg

Activists make strategic decisions about how to pursue their claims, but strategy is hard to study and the topic is underdeveloped theoretically. Here, we contribute to the…

Abstract

Activists make strategic decisions about how to pursue their claims, but strategy is hard to study and the topic is underdeveloped theoretically. Here, we contribute to the developing academic literature on social movement strategy by offering a theoretical framework that emphasizes three distinct, albeit interrelated, movement choices: arenas of action, advocacy tactics, and demands. This framework allows us to infer strategy at the movement level through the analysis of events data. Using events data from the New York Times from 1959 to 1996, in conjunction with historical accounts of abortion politics in the United States, we analyze the development of the strategies of the anti-abortion and abortion rights movements. We demonstrate the utility of this framework, and show how movement strategies are affected by both political opportunities and the actions of countermovements, whose activists respond to the same political opportunities. We conclude with a discussion of the complications of assessing movement strategy and call for more research on the topic.

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Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84663-892-3

Book part
Publication date: 6 May 2008

Scott E. Lemieux and George I. Lovell

This chapter offers an explanation for the mixed record of the Supreme Court since the 1960s, and considers the implications of that record for the future. The chapter emphasizes…

Abstract

This chapter offers an explanation for the mixed record of the Supreme Court since the 1960s, and considers the implications of that record for the future. The chapter emphasizes that judicial power is connected to choices made by other political actors. We argue that conventional ways of measuring the impact of Court rulings and the Court's treatment of precedents are misleading. The Court cannot be understood as a counter-majoritarian protector of rights. In both past and future, electoral outcomes determine the policy areas in which the Court will be influential, and also the choices the justices make about how to portray their treatment of law and precedents.

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Special Issue Constitutional Politics in a Conservative Era
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1486-7

Book part
Publication date: 6 May 2008

Ronald Kahn

Legalists and social scientists have not been able to explain the expansion of gay rights in a conservative age because they refuse to respect the special qualities of judicial…

Abstract

Legalists and social scientists have not been able to explain the expansion of gay rights in a conservative age because they refuse to respect the special qualities of judicial decision making. These qualities require the Supreme Court to look simultaneously at the past, present, and future, and, most importantly, to determine questions of individual rights through a consideration of how citizens are to live under a continuing rights regime. Unless scholars understand how and why Supreme Court decision making differs from that of more directly politically accountable institutions we can expect no greater success in explaining or predicting individual rights in the future.

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Special Issue Constitutional Politics in a Conservative Era
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1486-7

Book part
Publication date: 22 May 2012

Deana A. Rohlinger, Ben Kail, Miles Taylor and Sarrah Conn

Purpose – Although scholars have long been interested in how social movements use mass media to forward their goals, sociological research almost exclusively focuses on the…

Abstract

Purpose – Although scholars have long been interested in how social movements use mass media to forward their goals, sociological research almost exclusively focuses on the ability of activist groups to get their ideas and organizations in general audience, mainstream media coverage. This paper contributes to a more systematic understanding of media coverage outcomes by broadening the range of outlets considered relevant to political discourse. In addition to mainstream venues, we consider conservative and liberal/left outlets in our analysis of social movement organization media coverage.

Method – Using negative binomial regression, we analyze how organizational characteristics, organizational frames, political elites, and event type affect the rates of social movement organization media coverage in mainstream and partisan news venues.

Findings – We find that the independent variables play very different roles in mainstream and partisan media coverage outcomes. Specifically, while organizational characteristics and frames often enhance the media coverage outcomes of activist groups in mainstream venues, political elites have no effect at all. In contrast, organizational characteristics and frames do not affect social movement media coverage in partisan outlets, whereas political elites and event type do.

Originality of the paper – Conceptually, this research broadens how scholars think about the relationship between social movement groups and mass media as well as the factors that influence media outcomes.

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Media, Movements, and Political Change
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-881-6

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Book part
Publication date: 8 February 2016

Susan Frelich Appleton and Susan Ekberg Stiritz

This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation…

Abstract

This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.

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Special Issue: Feminist Legal Theory
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-782-0

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Book part
Publication date: 6 May 2008

George Thomas

Popular constitutionalists seek to recover the popular sovereignty foundations of American constitutionalism, bringing the people in as active participants in the constitutional…

Abstract

Popular constitutionalists seek to recover the popular sovereignty foundations of American constitutionalism, bringing the people in as active participants in the constitutional enterprise as they create and refashion the Constitution by “majoritarian and populist mechanisms” (Amar, 1995, p. 89). The result is to recover an understanding, in FDR's words, of constitution as a “layman's document, not a lawyer's contract” (Kramer, 2004, p. 207). This understanding has deep roots in American constitutionalism, tracing its lineage back to the founding and, as popular constitutionalists insist, finds powerful expression in the likes of The Federalist and Abraham Lincoln (Ackerman, 1991; Tushnet, 1998). In exercising popular sovereignty, the people founded the Constitution, but they did not simply retreat from the trajectory of constitutional development. Rather, as Bruce Ackerman argues, since the Constitution of 1787 the people have spoken in a manner that has re-founded the Constitution giving us a “multiple origins originalism” (Kersch, 2006a, p. 801; see also Amar, 1998 and 2005). In turning to founding era thought and the notion of constitutional foundations, popular constitutionalists like Ackerman and Amar make common cause with conservatives who turn to original intent, but then they seek to synthesize this understanding with democratic expressions of popular will by emphasizing both formal and informal constitutional change, giving us layered “foundings,” and a more complex version of “living constitutionalism.” Such constitutional change, however, can only legitimately come from an authentic expression of “We the People.”

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Special Issue Constitutional Politics in a Conservative Era
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1486-7

Book part
Publication date: 21 November 2022

Sandra Reineke

This chapter examines how lawmakers had to grapple with whether and how to regulate medically assisted reproduction after the 1988 Baby M court case in the United States propelled…

Abstract

This chapter examines how lawmakers had to grapple with whether and how to regulate medically assisted reproduction after the 1988 Baby M court case in the United States propelled surrogate motherhood and related reproductive technologies onto the public policy stage. The chapter compares the public policy approaches of two countries, France and Germany, with the regulatory structures in the United States where the Baby M court case that garnered international attention took place. Specifically, the chapter provides an in-depth examination of the legal and historical contexts of each country's policy approaches in the form of existing national marriage, family, and adoption laws as well as policies regulating human reproduction. Lawmakers' task became even more pressing once citizens began using the court system and traveled abroad to either gain access to proscribed technologies or use them for a lesser fee elsewhere. As a result, Germany developed one of the most restrictive national laws in the world while France established certain legal proscriptions, which are still more far-reaching than the regulatory structures in the United States. Along the way, this developing policy area contributed to the creation of international frameworks governing medically assisted reproduction and the development of national bioethics advisory councils.

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Biopolitics at 50 Years
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-108-2

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Book part
Publication date: 6 May 2008

David A. Yalof

The premise that the U.S. Supreme Court never veers too far off from the dominant national political coalition (Dahl, 1957) has become widely accepted among social scientists…

Abstract

The premise that the U.S. Supreme Court never veers too far off from the dominant national political coalition (Dahl, 1957) has become widely accepted among social scientists today. To fulfill that promise, however, the confirmation process for justices must serve as a plebiscite through which the public can ratify or reject future justices based on their views. Unfortunately, modern confirmation hearings have become an exercise in obfuscation, providing little meaningful dialogue on important issues. Because conservative Republican presidents have made the lion's share of appointments in recent times, social conservatives have most often benefited from a process that has severed the link between Supreme Court nominees and the polity they must serve.

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Special Issue Constitutional Politics in a Conservative Era
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1486-7

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