Problems With Authority

(Excerpt) Judicial decision-making rests on a foundation of unwritten rules—those that govern the weight of authority. Such rules, including the cornerstone principle of stare decisis, are created informally through the internal social practices of the judiciary. Because weight-of-authority rules are largely informal and almost entirely unwritten, we lack a comprehensive account of their content. This raises serious questions—sounding in due process and access to justice—about whether judicial decision-making rests ultimately on judges’ arbitrary and unexamined preferences rather than transparent and deliberative processes. These norms of authority are largely invisible to many, including parties appearing before the courts. They govern the construction of every judicial decision, but they are not the product of design. As a whole, this body of norms—a foundational set of unwritten insiders’ rules created without deliberation by an elite set of judges—is both problematic and surprisingly unexamined. Imagine a game of Scrabble where only one of the players determines the value of the letters. Add that the player setting values does not have to tell other players what the letters are worth. Finally, add that the player can change the letter values at any time during the game, even after it is finished. Creating and adjusting values is what judges do with what I call “weight-of-authority rules,” which lie at the heart of judicial decision-making. Weight-of-authority rules are almost entirely “unwritten law,” or “Lex non Scripta,” not enacted in a traditional positive law form. There are no constitutional provisions, no regulations, nor any legislation governing the weight of legal authority. The principle of stare decisis is often expressed in judicial opinions, but it did not originate in any particular case. Instead, like almost all rules related to the weight of authority, stare decisis emerged from the social practices of the judiciary, with no clear consensus on when it attained its current form. There is no textual source for the vast majority of authority practices; there never has been. Yet rules on the weight of authority are widely considered to be, without question, authoritative legal rules. We do not have a law that tells us the Constitution is valid; we accept that it is so. Similarly, the rules that tell us what else counts as law rest entirely on our acceptance of them. It is an obvious yet often unseen truth, like the water the proverbial fish swims in when it asks, “what is water?

Diverse Perspectives on the Living-Learning Community Experience at a Large Public University

The purpose of this study was to investigate the specific experiences and program characteristics that students, faculty, and staff experience in the living-learning communities. This paper summarizes the findings of a program evaluation inclusive of a survey and interview protocol on the student, faculty, and staff experiences in living-learning communities (LLCs) at a large, public university in the southeast. The study employed a mixed methods design including a student survey and faculty/staff interviews. Data shows LLC students value the living-learning community experience and have positive experiences with the LLC academic and social climate and believe their peers support the diverse identities of one another. LLC faculty, staff, and students have disparate perspectives on LLC mentoring opportunities; most LLC students do not report receiving mentoring from LLC faculty and staff, and most LLC faculty and staff did not have the opportunity to provide robust mentoring for their students. Students involved in PeerAssisted Student Support (PASS) had significantly different positive academic experiences than their peers, while students who work have slightly less engagement with LLC academic experiences. The findings suggest UNF LLC administrators implement structures to support faculty and staff mentoring and continued dialogue regarding how the LLC experience mitigates students’ diversity and identity development

Trustworthy maps

Maps get used for decision making about the world\u27s most pressing problems (e.g., climate change, refugee crises, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, pandemic disease). Although maps have historically been a trusted source of information, changes in society (e.g., lower levels of trust in decision makers) and in mapmaking technologies and practices (e.g., anyone can now make their own maps) mean that we need to spend some time thinking about how, when, and why people trust maps and mapmaking processes. This is critically important if we want stakeholders to engage constructively with the information we present in maps, because they are unlikely to do so if they do not trust what they see. Here I outline three questions about trust and maps that I think need research attention. First, how can we focus map readers\u27 attention on the trustworthiness of mapped data, especially if trustworthiness changes as in the case of real-time data sources? Second, does presenting uncertainty information on maps affect the level of trust map readers have in the map, and if so, does trust vary depending on how the uncertainty information is presented? Finally, how does virality affect trust? Are viral maps less trusted? The time and resources required to develop a better understanding of how trust in maps might be changing will be repaid. The world needs good information to guide policy- and decision-making. Well designed maps can help stakeholders to work together to solve problems, but only if they are trusted

Problems With Authority

Judicial decisionmaking rests on a foundation of unwritten rules—those that govern the weight of authority. Such rules, including the cornerstone principle of stare decisis, are created informally through the internal social practices of the judiciary. Despite the central role of such rules in judicial decisionmaking, we lack a good account of how they are created, revised, and enforced. There is something paradoxical and troubling about the notion that the rules of the game are determined by the players as they play the game according to those rules. Because weight-of-authority rules are largely informal and almost entirely unwritten, we don’t even have a comprehensive account of their content. This raises serious questions—sounding in due process and access to justice—about whether judicial decisionmaking rests ultimately on judges’ arbitrary and unexamined preferences rather than transparent and deliberative processes.I surface this evolving set of rules as a complex body of judicial norms that extends well beyond the principle of stare decisis. Using an original data set, I examine norms and practices in the Tenth Circuit as a case study. I reveal norms of authority that are largely invisible to all—including parties appearing before the courts—and illustrate some of the consequences of a decentralized informal rule-making system. These norms govern the construction of every judicial decision, but they are not the product of design. As a whole, this body of norms—a foundational set of unwritten insiders’ rules created without deliberation by an elite set of judges—is both problematic and surprisingly unexamined. This article exposes the problem and considers possible avenues of reform, advocating for transparency as a critical first step in addressing the problems with authority

“If Rules They Can Be Called”

Who gets to decide what counts as law? The weight of authority in the U.S. legal system is governed almost entirely by unwritten rules—social norms that establish which sources have weight (and how much weight they have). In 2016, Bryan A. Garner and twelve judges published a treatise essentially codifying unwritten rules related to the operation of precedent. That book, The Law of Judicial Precedent, has itself become a source of authority (on legal authority), cited by judges across jurisdictions. In this essay, I question whether the judicial norms governing the operation of precedent are appropriately presented as definitive blackletter law. Textualization has power. While such a treatise might bring some transparency to the judicial decisionmaking process—making judicial norms easier to identify—it might also cement such norms prematurely, inhibiting their evolution. Many of the most frequently cited blackletter principles in the treatise represent complex tools of judicial reasoning, not well-suited to a rule format. Judicial citation to these precepts may reflect a kind of performative formalism, in which judges exhibit deference to “law” made up of tools of reasoning and social norms they themselves are responsible for creating. The treatise’s pseudo-codification of judicial norms (and subsequent citation by judges) is at the very least, worthy of discussion

Productive Chaos: Disability, Advising, and the Writing Process

Because many faculty and graduate students pursue disability studies projects in an institutional vacuum (often being the only disability studies person in a department or institution), it’s exciting when faculty and graduate students come together to work on disability studies projects. Such has been the experience of the two authors of this piece: a graduate student who recently completed her Master’s thesis on hyperactive/ADHD rhetorics (Griffin) and her thesis advisor, whose research area is disability studies, rhetoric, and writing (Amy). As we’ve worked together, we’ve excitedly shared research that enriches both our writing projects, and we’ve exchanged teaching ideas to make our classrooms more inclusive. We’ve had the chance to work interdependently, including on this piece, where one of us got the project going and the other supplied the creative spontaneity we needed to finish it. Further, in our case, we’ve had the chance to openly identify as disabled and use crip humor to navigate our work together. Alongside these benefits, there are what we sincerely and euphemistically call generative tensions, which occur when access needs and desires conflict, when power dynamics re-assert themselves, and when attempts at change and adaptation fail.University Writing Cente

Mapping Emotional Cartography

Maps are somehow shy. They tend to hide their emotional side behind their clear lines, precise points, minimalistic words, numerical data and informative purpose. But when we scratch the cartographic surface, maps appear to be impregnated with all sorts of emotions. The emotions associated with the topic mapped and the ones evoked through the cartographic design. The emotions felt by the mapmaker while drawing the map and the ones felt by the map user when discovering it. The anger and sadness triggered by social injustices revealed on a map, or the simple pleasure felt while admiring a beautiful cartographic design. The emotional experiences we clearly remember and the most common ones we hardly notice or we simply forget. Beneath the surface, maps and mapping teem with emotions of all sorts. In this introduction to the special issue on Maps and Emotions, we will reveal the multiple relationships that exist between maps, mapping, and emotions

Nudging travellers to societally favourable routes: The impact of visual communication and emotional responses on decision making

As urbanisation increases, in many places, the transport system is suffering from problems that may affect large parts of the urban population, such as traffic congestion or increased air pollution. In both cases, a better distribution of traffic flows could contribute to establishing a more sustainable transport system, and to improve the situation from a societal point of view. In this paper, we use cartographic symbolisation for communicating favourability of route options for achieving a societal benefit. Since map symbols can evoke different emotional responses in the viewer, we investigate to which extent map symbols evoke positive and negative emotions and whether these influence route choice decision making. We created different cartographic visualisations and designed a user study that investigates the effectiveness and suitability of these different visualisation variants for influencing route choice based on two scenarios: traffic and air quality. Fourteen route maps were prepared using different map symbols to symbolise societally favourable and non-favourable route options. The results of this study show that map symbols can be used effectively for influencing route choice towards choosing the favourable route for the two tested scenarios. While visualisations that modify only lines were more effective in the traffic scenario, area symbol modifications were more effective for the air quality scenario. The symbolisation evoked a wide range of emotions in participants. While non-favourable routes mainly evoke negative emotions (particularly fear), favourable routes mainly evoked positive emotions (particularly contentment) or no emotions. The results further demonstrate that for some of the visualisation variants, emotions felt in response to the map visualisations contributed significantly to changing the route choice decisions in favour of the societally favourable route option. The findings of this research demonstrate the relationship between route choice behaviour and emotional responses elicited by map symbols

Dually Involved Youth: Exploring Child Welfare Involvement, Maltreatment, and Offensive Severity

Thesis advisor: Ruth G. McRoyThesis advisor: Thomas M. CreaYouth involved with both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems are referred to as dually involved youth. Children involved in the child welfare system are highly vulnerable for maladaptive outcomes, and in particular, engagement in delinquent behaviors. Those youth who criminally offend are likely to shift back and forth between the two systems, potentially increasing their vulnerability for poor outcomes. The theoretical bases for this study are derived from ecological systems and attachment theories, specifically the influence of trauma on attachment. The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Department of Youth Services (DYS) provided the data for this secondary analysis of the characteristics of dually involved youth and the factors related to offense severity for youth committed to DYS. The study explored: 1) the relationship of gender, race, and age of delinquency commitment to offense severity; 2) the influence of child welfare involvement (measured by total unique count of social workers, home removal, and out-of-home placement) to offense severity; 3) the influence of prior maltreatment to offense severity; and 4) the association of gender and race to the likelihood of dual involvement. Results indicated that while maltreatment was found to be significantly associated with more severe offenses, greater child welfare involvement was associated with less severe offenses. Additionally, the results indicated that female juvenile delinquents were significantly more likely to be dually involved. The issues of racial disproportionality within the juvenile justice and child welfare systems were examined. While results did not indicate statistical significance in determining the likelihood of dual involvement based on race, disproportionality in the juvenile justice system exists. Implications for policy changes included the following: 1) the need for gender specific programming, 2) an increased commitment to reducing disproportionality in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, 3) increased focus on multisystem services to meet the needs of youth. Strategies for using kinship placements as an avenue to maintain familial connections are discussed. Additional research is needed to explore the influence of the interaction between gender and race, mental health and environment factors (e.g., poverty, neighborhood characteristics) on likelihood of dual involvement.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work.Discipline: Social Work