Last semester ended up well.
U.S. Constitutional History I: Colonies to 1860: ‘A’
Constitutional Theory: ‘A’
On my history final exam the professor wrote: “Maybe the best exam I’ve ever seen in this course.” (I received an A+ on the exam.)
Last Semester
January 11th, 2008Constitutional Theory Term Paper Update
December 1st, 2007A while back I posted about potential topics for a constitutional theory term paper. I ended up choosing the fifth option (What is the purpose of constitutional theory? Why do people do constitutional theory?). It was both my favorite and favorite of everyone who provided feedback. The paper has veered more toward an account of authority (legitimacy), though the purpose of constitutional theory is still a factor. That is, I believe constitutional theory has a role to play in an account of authority. I submitted a first draft last week for comments. The paper is still very rough. Nonetheless, my professor’s final comment was: “Wow! This is the most ambitious student draft I’ve read in a long time, maybe ever. That’s fine, if you can pull it off, and I suspect you can. If you do, this will be not only a publishable piece, but an intellectually useful (and thus potentially a widely read) one.”
Disaster Capitalism comes to Michigan
November 3rd, 2007I get the phrase “disaster capitalism” from Naomi Klein’s article “Disaster Capitalism: The new economy of catastrophe” in Harper’s (October 2007) [available to Harper's subscribers in their archive].
Guardian Unlimited | Rapture rescue will airlift you to safety. If you can afford it
… In northern Michigan, during the week that the California fires raged, the rural community of Pellston was in the grip of an intense public debate. The village is about to become the headquarters for the first fully privatised national disaster response centre.
The plan is the brainchild of Sovereign Deed, a startup with links to the mercenary firm Triple Canopy. Like HelpJet, Sovereign Deed works on a “country club-type membership fee”, according to the company’s vice-president, the retired general Richard Mills. In exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000 followed by annual dues of $15,000, members receive “comprehensive catastrophe response services” should their city be hit by a man-made disaster that can “cause severe threats to public health and/or well being” (read: a terrorist attack), a disease outbreak or a natural disaster. Basic membership includes access to medicine, water and food, while those who pay for “premium tiered services” will be eligible for VIP rescue missions.
Like so many private disaster companies, Sovereign Deed is selling escape from climate change and the failed state – by touting the security clearance and connections its executives amassed while working for that same state. So Mills, speaking recently in Pellston, explained: “The reality of Fema is that it has no infrastructure, and a lot of our National Guard is elsewhere.” Sovereign Deed, on the other hand, claims to have “direct access and special arrangements with several national and international information centres. These proprietary arrangements allow our emergency operations centre to … give our members that critical head start in times of crisis”. In this secular version of the Rapture, God’s hand is unnecessary. Not when you have retired CIA agents and ex-special forces lifting the chosen to safety – no need to pray, just pay. And who needs a celestial New Jerusalem when you can have Pellston, with its flexible local politicians and its surprisingly modern regional airport? …
Resistance is futile. So why then do some people resist science?
September 17th, 2007Evangelical Atheists like Richard Dawkins frequently bemoan the resistance to science they see in Evangelical Christians ((I’m using “Evangelical Christian” to signify the set of Christians which take a literalistic view of the bible.)) Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg provide some insight into where resistance to science may come from:
The developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy. This is the current situation in the United States with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and of evolutionary biology. These clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals — and, in the United States, these intuitive beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities. Hence these are among the domains where Americans’ resistance to science is the strongest. ((http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bloom07/bloom07_index.html))
Robert McHenry writing on Britannica Blog takes issue with Bloom and Weisberg: “a good deal more is needed to answer the question the two authors initially set themselves. We need to know much more about the various mental faculties that humans exhibit in varying degrees. Curiosity, for a prime example. That’s a common word for something that, in ordinary discourse, we think we know about, but what is it, what is its source? Why are some people more curious than others?”
How Ferndale became great for gays
September 14th, 2007I know The Advocate named Ferndale as a “best city” for gays and lesbians. ((http://www.metromodemedia.com/inthenews/ferndale10.aspx)) But I didn’t know how Ferndale became gay central for southeastern Michigan. This Advocate article from a few years back filled in the blanks:
Ferndale got its reputation as a gay mecca after people in Detroit’s Palmer Park neighborhood, once considered the anchor of southeast Michigan’s gay community, started moving out to avoid crime and poor city services in the mid 1980s, said Craig Covey, Ferndale’s mayor pro tem and the director of the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project. Former residents scattered throughout the area, but a handful of people–including Covey–were drawn to the old, inexpensive homes of Ferndale. “Ferndale was a blank canvas,” he said. “Downtown was empty.”
Today, Nine Mile Road is full of restaurants, bars and bookstores, many of them gay-owned. Soon after Covey arrived, Ferndale’s small gay population began organizing, he said, and by the early 1990s, the Affirmations community center and the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church had taken up residence in town. Some longtime residents of the blue-collar town were wary. “People were a little afraid–apprehensive–at first,” said Jackie Leggio, a waitress at Como’s, an Italian restaurant and Ferndale fixture. Now that fear is gone, she said.
Zaragon tears down Ann Arbor’s historic Anberay Apartment Building
September 13th, 2007This makes me sad. I walked passed the Anberay Apartment Building nearly every day when I lived on East University in 1996-1997.
Zaragon tears down UofM’s “Melrose Place” apartment to make room for new lofts
Death fences surround Ann Arbor’s historic Anberay Apartment Building — chain link fences that signal a building’s demise. The courtyard’s mature trees have been chopped down and the top soil upended. Heavy machinery has begun to dig into the middle of the building. Demolition will probably be completed by the time this is published.
Constitutional Theory Term Paper
September 13th, 2007I need to write a term paper for my constitutional theory class. I had a meeting, on Monday, with the professor to discuss paper topic ideas. I entered the meeting with two vague ideas and left with five slightly less vague ideas.
- Write about the state of the art in empirical research about why people obey the law/authority? A jumping off point would be Tom Tyler, Why People Obey the Law.
- Take the bottom line summary or consensus from the empirical research and see how well a particular author’s theories match up. This would amount to, on some level, a study of empirical analysis vs. conceptual analysis.
- Some scholars view “writtenness” as essential to constitutionalism. I think they are wrong. I could take a particular author’s statement of why writtenness is important and challenge it. What goals are served by writtenness? What goals are not served by writtenness?
- I could write generally (historically) about the lack of needing writtenness. There would be a heavy focus on English legal history, which is cool because I like English legal history and just read a ton of it last semester. How does England mange to serve or uphold <insert some important political value or important institution> without a written constitution? What does that say about the weight American constitutional theorists place on writtenness?
- What is the purpose of constitutional theory? Why do people do constitutional theory? I have been thinking a lot about this last one since the Monday meeting. Currently it is my favorite. My initial and tentative conclusion is that constitutional theory (the conceptual analysis variety) is a form of myth making. Theorists in this mold are not satisfied with empirical explanations for why people do things (e.g., follow the law or treat the constitution as authoritative). They want more. Some want justification for the system and the way people act in the system that is beyond the system itself. Perhaps you could say they are searching for a transcendental justification? In such theories the founding fathers and a story about intentional legislative or constitutional actions often serve this function. Others want to tell a story about how the system really does constrain government. Theories in this mold focus on writtenness and original intent as constraining forces. Part of the reason they want more is that the founding fathers ditched the Monarchy and state church. I think religion and/or monarchy may provide a kind of transcendental (or mythological) justification. William Appleman Williams, in The Contours of American History, puts it this way: “Americans had come to consider the law the secular equivalent of religion as the cement of their mercantilism.” (Contours, 158) Did the Church, religion, and monarchy provide some sort of transcendental-mythological justification which is now lacking? How do myths work? Can constitutional theory convincingly be explained as search for transcendental-mythological justification? Could critical literary theory be applicable in any way?
I trying to decide between and focus these topics. To that end I welcome any thoughts or comments. In particular I’m looking for reading suggestions for (5).
William Penn on Government
September 10th, 2007Taken from Penn’s Preface to the Frame of Government of Pennsylvania, 1682: ((Reprinted in Kermit Hall, Major Problems in American Constitutional History: Documents and Essays, 2 vols., Vol. I: The Colonial Era Through Reconstruction, (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1992), 38-40.))
“Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the laws rule, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.”
“Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too.”
“Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.”
“It is true, good laws have some awe upon ill ministers, but that is where they have not power to escape or abolish them, and the people are generally wise and good: but a loose and depraved people (which is the question) love laws and an administration like themselves.”
Phrenology for the 21st Century
September 10th, 2007In a kind of 21st century phrenology a guardian article reports scientists are using 3D facial imaging to detect genetic disorders:
Peter Hammond, at the Institute of Child Health in London, used 3D digital photography to build a library of healthy children’s faces and merged them to produce an “average” healthy face. He then travelled to hospitals around the world to take 3D images of children with various genetic disorders and from them created typical faces for each condition. Each image contains 25,000 points that capture the most subtle contours of the face.
Dr Hammond’s team has now used the images to diagnose disorders in children. Doctors simply need to take 3D images of the child’s face and use the computer to see which condition their facial features most closely resemble.
The article mentions the success rate of the test: “In tests, Dr Hammond’s computer system accurately diagnosed 92% of fragile X syndrome cases, 98% of Williams syndrome cases and 91% of patients with Smith Magenis. Details of the research are to be presented today at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in York.”
Cute atheist
September 6th, 2007I need to make amends to grooveadam for my post about height. So here is a cute atheist guy talking about atheism.