Data-Driven Constitutional Avoidance

This article uses a case study to explain how empirical analysis can promote judicial modesty. In Matal v. Tam, the U.S. Supreme Court invoked the First Amendment to strike down the Lanham Act\u27s bar on federal registration of disparaging trademarks. The Tam decision has great constitutional significance. It expands First Amendment coverage into a new field of economic regulation, and it deepens the constitutional prohibition on viewpoint-based speech regulations. This article contends that empirical analysis could have given the Court a narrower basis for the Tam result, one that would have avoided the fraught First Amendment issues the Court decided. The Tam challenge came from an Asian-American rock band that calls itself The Slants -as a means to re-appropriate an anti-Asian slur. The authors performed an original empirical study of how Americans understand the term slants. The data show that both Asian-Americans and non-Asian-Americans understand the term variably based on its context. Both groups recognize the term\u27s derogatory meaning, but they also understand the use of the term by an Asian-American band as an effort to re-appropriate the derogatory term. This contextual variation in how Americans understand the term slants exposes the incoherence of the Lanham Act\u27s flat treatment of certain terms as uniformly disparaging. That incoherence supports the legal conclusion that the disparagement bar is unconstitutionally vague. A finding of vagueness in Tam would have achieved relative constitutional avoidance, invalidating the disparagement bar on a narrower, less constitutionally significant ground than the actual decision\u27s First Amendment analysis. Constitutional avoidance serves judicial modesty values that courts and our broader legal culture tend to portray favorably. This article\u27s study and analysis provide a model for other situations in which empirical data can give courts a path to constitutional avoidance

Taming Uncivil Discourse

In an era of increasingly intense populist politics, a variety of issues of intergroup prejudice, discrimination, and conflict have moved center stage in American politics. Among these is “political correctness” and, in particular, what constitutes a legitimate discourse of political conflict and opposition. Yet the meaning of legitimate discourse is being turned on its head as some disparaged groups seek to reclaim, or re-appropriate, the slurs directed against them. Using a Supreme Court decision about whether “The Slants” – a band named after a traditional slur against Asians – can trademark its name, we test several hypotheses about re-appropriation processes, based on a nationally representative sample with an oversample of Asian-Americans and several survey experiments. In general, we find that contextual factors influence how people understand and evaluate potentially disparaging words, and we suggest that the political discourse of intergroup relations in the U.S. has become more complicated by processes of re-appropriation

Gut biogeography of the bacterial microbiota

Animals assemble and maintain a diverse but host-specific gut microbial community. In addition to characteristic microbial compositions along the longitudinal axis of the intestines, discrete bacterial communities form in microhabitats, such as the gut lumen, colonic mucus layers and colonic crypts. In this Review, we examine how the spatial distribution of symbiotic bacteria among physical niches in the gut affects the development and maintenance of a resilient microbial ecosystem. We consider novel hypotheses for how nutrient selection, immune activation and other mechanisms control the biogeography of bacteria in the gut, and we discuss the relevance of this spatial heterogeneity to health and disease

One- and Two-Dimensional Optical Lattices on a Chip for Quantum Computing

We propose a way to make arrays of optical frequency dipole-force microtraps for cold atoms above a dielectric substrate. Traps are nodes in the evanescent wave fields above an optical waveguide resulting from interference of different waveguide modes. The traps have features sought in developing neutral atom based architectures for quantum computing: ∼1 mW of laser power yields very tight traps 150 nm above a waveguide with trap vibrational frequencies ∼1 MHz and vibrational ground state sizes ∼10 nm. The arrays are scalable and allow addressing of individual sites for quantum logic operations

Reviewing Software as a Means of Enhancing Instruction

A software review procedure developed by the authors is described. The procedure centers around a form that extends the functionality of traditional software evaluation forms by enhancing the use of the computer software in the early childhood classroom. The form encourages teachers to discover ways a piece of software can be integrated across disciplines and used as an anchor for instruction. Users of the review form are also encouraged to examine ways the software motivates the user to remain engaged in its use. The majority of the review form emphasizes the important role of the teacher in identifying outcomes or skills, which may be acquired while using the software. Outcomes or skills are divided into nine areas of development: (a) physical development, (b) social/emotional development, (c) language development, (d) math/science development, (e) problem solving development, (f) self-esteem/confidence development, (g) aesthetic development, (h) multicultural awareness, and (i) creativity development. After addressing the outcomes in the nine areas of development, the reviewer creates activities, which can be applied to those areas. The review form was developed as an aid to educators in using software, which is age appropriate and individually appropriate

The English Preposition WITH

Sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation through Grant GN-534 from the Office of Science Information Service to the Information Sciences Research Center, The Ohio State University