Integrity: Its Causes and Cures

Integrity is a good thing, isn\u27t it? In ordinary parlance, we sometimes use it as a near synonym for honesty, but the word means much more than honesty alone. It means wholeness or unity of person, an inner consistency between deed and principle. Integrity shares etymology with other unity-words-integer, integral, integrate, integration. All derive from the Latin integrare, to make whole. And the person of integrity is the person whose conduct and principles operate in happy harmony. Our psyches always seek that happy harmony. When our conduct and principles clash with each other, the result, social psychology teaches us, is cognitive dissonance. And dissonance theory hypothesizes that one of our fundamental psychic mechanisms is the drive to reduce dissonance

Ombuds as Nomads? The Intersections of Dispute System Design and Identity

Whether providing requested information, careful attention, informal coaching, impartial mediation, or upward feedback, ombuds operate within an “oscillating space” occasioned by contending purposes of their work. Their relationships to both their visitors and their host organization confer a dynamic identity, as they are at once supporting the visitor and supporting the organization. With which does an ombudsman identify, their organization or their visitor? Can the answer be both? This article will explore the opportunities and challenges arising from this tension

Beyond Stress Reduction: Mindfulness as a Skill for Developing Authentic Professional Identity

Mindfulness is often touted in the legal field for its capacity to help reduce stress and improve focus through the management of distractions. However, the potential contributions of mindfulness practice for the legal profession extend beyond stress reduction\u27 and include great promise for helping lawyers understand who they are as members of the legal profession - that is, their professional identity. This knowledge is empowering because it allows lawyers facing ethical quandaries to make choices that better align their professional values with their personal values, rather than aligning their personal values with professional values and societal expectations of success. In so doing, mindfulness practice has the capacity to help improve attorney well-being, uplift the level of professionalism throughout the field, and mitigate the need for attorney discipline

Implicit Bias\u27s Failure

The 2016 presidential election was a coming-out party of sorts for the concept of implicit bias-and not necessarily in a good way. In answering a question about race relations and the police during the vice-presidential debate, Mike Pence introduced the topic. Offering his explanation for why the Fraternal Order of Police had endorsed the Trump-Pence ticket, Pence said

Home Court Advantage? An Empirical Analysis of Local Bias in U.S. District Court Diversity Jurisdiction Cases

In granting diversity of citizenship jurisdiction to the federal courts, there is an underlying assumption that federal courts will be less biased toward out-of-state litigants as compared with state courts. While this may be true, the assumption fails to consider an important empirical question: to what extent do federal courts favor home state litigants or disfavor out-of-state litigants when deciding diversity jurisdiction cases? Relying on the Integrated Database (IDB) compiled by the Federal Judicial Center and the Administrative Offices of the U.S. Courts, we present an original, empirical analysis of diversity jurisdiction case outcomes in the U.S. districts courts from 1988 through 2021 to assess whether home state or out-of-state litigant status influences case settlements or case verdicts. The empirical analysis reveals that while diversity jurisdiction cases are more likely to settle than other cases heard in federal courts, these settlements are particularly likely to occur when both parties are out-of-state litigants. In addition, the analysis does not uncover systematic evidence of home state favoritism in judgments for the plaintiff. However, the results provide evidence that corporate litigants—who are most likely to have significant resources and serve as “repeat players” in the judicial system—are most likely to prevail in diversity cases. Given that the empirical results suggest that federal district courts do not systematically advantage or disadvantage litigants based upon in-state or out-of-state status, these findings have important implications for litigation strategy and forum selection

H-Diplo ISSF round table: Steven Ward. status and the challenge of rising powers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

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"Friendly" pharisees and social identity in Acts

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Societal security and social psychology

The concept of societal security as developed by the Copenhagen school has three underlying weaknesses: a tendency to reify societies as independent social agents, a use of too vague a definition of 'identity', and a failure to demonstrate sufficiently that social security matters to individuals. This article shows that applying social identity theory to the societal security concept helps remedy these weaknesses and closes the theoretical gaps that the Copenhagen school has left open. It enables us to treat 'society' as an independent variable without reifying it as an independent agent. It also suggests a much sharper definition of identity, and a rationale for the Copenhagen school's claim that individuals have a psychological need to achieve societal security by protecting their group boundaries. Social identity theory thus supports the societal security concept in its central assumptions while giving it stronger theoretical foundations and greater analytical clout