Historical Introduction to American Government (CUNY Custom Edition)

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Historical Introduction to American Government CUNY Custom Edition | CHARLES TIEN

ISBN 13: 978-1-608718-89-4

9 781608 718894

Historical Introduction to American Government CUNY Custom Edition Compiled by Charles Tien Hunter College, CUNY American Government: A Historical Introduction FALL 2011

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Historical Introduction to American Government CUNY Custom Edition

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Charles Tien Hunter College, CUNY American Government: A Historical Introduction Fall 2011

CQ Press Custom Books 2300 N Street, NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20037 Phone: 202-729-1900; toll-free, 1-866-4CQ-PRESS (1-866-427-7737) Web: www.cqpress.com CQ Press content included in this publication is copyrighted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

CONTENTS

1. STUDYING POLITICS SCIENTIFICALLY

1

Janet Buttolph Johnson, H.T. Reynolds and Jason D. Mycoff. From Political Science Research Methods, 6th Edition.

2. LYNDON JOHNSON'S MESSAGE TO CONGRESS ON THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT 37 Randall E. Adkins. From The Evolution of Political Parties, Campaigns, and Elections: Landmark Documents, 1787-2007.

3. THE "LITERARY DIGEST" POLL

55

Randall E. Adkins. From The Evolution of Political Parties, Campaigns, and Elections: Landmark Documents, 1787-2007.

4. THE ULTIMATE SOURCE OF POLITICAL OPINIONS: GENES AND THE ENVIRONMENT 63 John R. Alford and John R. Hibbing. From Understanding Public Opinion, 3rd Edition.

5. ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S "A HOUSE DIVIDED" SPEECH

79

Randall E. Adkins. From The Evolution of Political Parties, Campaigns, and Elections: Landmark Documents, 1787-2007. Page iii

6. IN TOCQUEVILLE'S FOOTSTEPS

89

Russell J. Dalton. From The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation Is Reshaping American Politics, Revised Edition.

7. DIVISIONS IN AMERICAN POLITICS

117

Mark D. Brewer and Jeffrey M. Stonecash. From Split: Class and Cultural Divides in American Politics.

8. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE'S "PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES" 145 Randall E. Adkins. From The Evolution of Political Parties, Campaigns, and Elections: Landmark Documents, 1787-2007.

9. THE FIRST KENNEDY-NIXON DEBATE

153

Randall E. Adkins. From The Evolution of Political Parties, Campaigns, and Elections: Landmark Documents, 1787-2007.

10. CONGRESS, THE TROUBLED INSTITUTION

173

Steven S. Smith. From Principles and Practice of American Politics: Classic and Contemporary Readings, 4th Edition.

11. GEORGE NORRIS'S RESOLUTION TO CHANGE THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE 191 Randall E. Adkins. From The Evolution of Political Parties, Campaigns, and Elections: Landmark Documents, 1787-2007.

12. BIRCH BAYH'S RESOLUTION TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION TO PROVIDE FOR DIRECT POPULAR ELECTION OF THE PRESIDENT 197 Randall E. Adkins. From The Evolution of Political Parties, Campaigns, and Elections: Landmark Documents, 1787-2007.

Page iv

13. "UNITED STATES V. CURTISS-WRIGHT EXPORT CORP" (1936) 203 Michael Nelson. From The Evolving Presidency: Landmark Documents, 1787–2010, 4th Edition.

14. THE FEDERAL JUDICIAL SYSTEM

211

Robert A. Carp, Ronald Stidham and Kenneth L. Manning. From Judicial Process in America, 8th Edition.

Page v

Page vi

CHAPTER

1

STUDYING POLITICS SCIENTIFICALLY BY JANET BUTTOLPH JOHNSON, H.T. REYNOLDS AND JASON D. MYCOFF

Excerpted from Janet Buttolph Johnson, H. T. Reynolds, Jason D. Mycoff, POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH METHODS, 6TH EDITION (Washington: DC, CQ Press, 2008), pp. 27-59.

CQ Press Custom Books - Page 1


CHAPTER 2

Studying Politics Scientifically

Most Americans like to think that judges in our legal system impartially and fairly follow established law and legal principles when making their rulings. People must wonder, then, why a president’s nomination to the federal judiciar y so often creates such a ruckus in Congress and the nation as a whole. Consider two editorials about President George W. Bush’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Samuel Alito. In opposing his nomination, Boston Globe editors wrote: Judge Alito’s judicial philosophy, his written record of court decisions, and his unconvincing, sometimes evasive, answers in his nomination hearings far outweigh the personal appeal. He should not be sent to the Supreme Court, where he could reverse the progress this nation has made toward lifting precisely the kinds of barriers his father struggled to overcome.1 Washington Post editors, however, felt differently: Judge Alito should be confirmed, both because of his positive qualities as an appellate judge and because of the dangerous precedent his rejection would set. . . . Judge Alito is superbly qualified. His record on the bench is that of a thoughtful conservative, not a raging ideologue. He pays careful attention to the record and doesn’t reach for the political outcomes he desires.2 Here we have two divergent opinions about the same man for the same office. Yet this difference should perhaps come as no surprise because many political scientists who have studied judicial decision making conclude that, when deciding cases, judges tend to follow their political ideology and beliefs, not abstract legal doctrine. As discussed in Chapter 1, Jeffrey A. Segal and Albert D. Cover found a relationship between justices’ personal attitudes and the content of their opinions on civil rights cases.3 Needless to say, this result contradicts what a lot of people assume about judicial decision making. The case provides a clear example of the frequent collision between a commonsense or conventional understanding of politics and systematic, empirical inquir y. Such conflict may cause one to wonder “who should be believed.” In


27

POLITICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH METHODS

this instance the investigators’ argument is at once counterintuitive and contentious; counterintuitive because it runs against the popular or commonsense belief that we are a government of laws, and contentious because it opposes other historical and political studies. Thus numerous questions arise: Why should we accept Segal and Cover’s argument? How did they arrive at their conclusion? Was their method sound? What sorts of evidence support their thesis? Should we take their word simply because the authors are well-known scholars? If someone else examined the problem, would he or she come to the same conclusions? These questions, in turn, fall under a broader one. In studying political phenomena—an activity that involves claims about how the world is, not about how it should be—is one way of answering superior to others? In Chapter 1 we implicitly argued that the answer is yes. There we emphasized empirical research methods, a set of procedures that employ scientific principles and techniques. Although this stance, which goes under various names such as positivism, behavioralism, or empiricism, is controversial both in and out of political science, it remains perhaps the dominant approach. But there are other schools of thought that do not fully accept the notion that the science is the most satisfactor y method of learning about politics and government. One holds that interpretation—or the effort to see how people understand, use, and react to language, symbols, and social institutions and rules—provides a better way. This side claims that politics and other social activities cannot always (or even ever) be satisfactorily studied scientifically. Interpretationists, as they are sometimes called, want to get inside people’s heads, as it were, to see how they, not the researcher, comprehend the world. We discuss interpretation as a methodology in a bit more detail later in this chapter. For now we note that the scientific spirit still prevails in the literature and teaching of political science, and our principal goal in this book is to explain its philosophy and techniques. Yet, since we recognize that science is just one way through which humans acquire knowledge, we must explore how it differs from other types of knowledge. We also discuss important features of the scientific research process as they relate to the study of politics and evaluate arguments against using the scientific method in the study of political behavior and institutions. We conclude with a brief histor y of political science as a discipline.

Characteristics of Scientific Knowledge In our daily lives we “know” things in many different ways. We know, for example, that water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit and that a virus called HIV causes AIDS. We also may “know” that liberals are “weaker” on national defense than conser vatives or that democracy is “better” than dictatorship. In

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STUDYING POLITICS SCIENTIFICALLY

some cases we know something because we believe what we read in the newspaper or hear on the radio. In other cases we believe it because of personal experience or because it appears to be consistent with common sense or is what a trusted authority told us. Modern political science, though, relies heavily on one kind of knowledge, knowledge obtained through the scientific process. This way of knowing differs greatly from information derived from myth, intuition, faith, common sense, or authority. It has certain characteristics that these other types of knowledge do not share completely.4 Scientists believe that their findings are based on objective, systematic obser vation and that their claims can and must in principle be verified or rejected by obser vation using a shared set of standards and procedures. The ultimate goal of science, which is not always attained, is to use verified results to construct causal theories that explain why phenomena behave the way they do.5 Scientific knowledge exhibits several characteristics. First, as we have just stressed, it depends on empirical verification. That is, a statement must be proved true by means of objective obser vation. Empirical means “relying or based on obser vation or experience.” 6 A political scientist uses senses to obser ve and record phenomena such as political protests, the number of ballots cast in an election, and invasions of the territor y of one nation by another and then describes and explains the obser vations as accurately as possible. By verified we mean that our acceptance or rejection of a statement regarding something “known” must be influenced by obser vation. 7 Thus, if we say that people in the upper classes vote more frequently than members of the lower R ECONSTRUCTED R ESEARCH strata, we must be able to provide tangible eviIn this section and also later in the chapter we list and dence, such as census or poll data, in support of describe various characteristics of scientific activity. this statement. Similarly, theories of why a pheThese attributes can be thought of as ideals. Not nomenon occurs as it does must be supported ever y social scientific statement or procedure meets by more or less hard evidence and not simply asthe criteria listed here. Moreover, empirical research is not a matter of blindly following a predetermined, serted or assumed to be true because someone general set of instructions. And research results are said so or our instinct tells us so. almost always a bit messy and tentative. So you The empirical nature of scientific knowledge should not expect to find many examples of redistinguishes it from mystical knowledge. In the searchers following a recipe. Nor will you in your own latter case, only “true believers” are able to obstudies always be able to follow a prescribed formula. Intuition, luck, and serendipity are sometimes necesser ve the phenomena that support their beliefs, sar y. What we present here is a reconstruction (or an and obser vations that would disprove their beabstraction) of the principles underlying the scientific liefs are impossible to specify. Knowledge deresearch process. If you understand these principles, rived from superstition and prejudice is usually then political science research will be much easier to not subjected to empirical verification either. Suread about or undertake. perstitious or prejudiced persons are likely to


29


note only phenomena that reinforce their beliefs while ignoring or dismissing those that do not. Thus their knowledge is based on selective and biased experience and obser vation. Superstitious people are often fearful of empirically testing their superstitions and resist doing so. Some philosophers of science, in fact, insist that a key characteristic of scientific claims is falsifiability, meaning the statements or hypotheses can in principle be rejected in the face of contravening empirical evidence. A claim not refutable by any conceivable obser vation or experiment is nonscientific. In this sense, the findings of science are usually considered tentative: they are “champion” only so long as competing ideas do not upend them. Indeed, the philosopher Karl Popper argues that scientists should think solely in terms of attempting to refute or falsify theories, not prove them.8 In any event, note that commonsense knowledge as well as knowledge derived from casual obser vation may be valid. Yet they do not constitute scientific knowledge until they have been empirically verified in a systematic and unbiased way. Alan Isaak notes that commonsense knowledge is often accepted “without question, as a matter of faith,” which means that facts are accepted without being established by commonly accepted rules and procedures of science.9 In view of the importance of verification and falsification, scientists must always remain open to alterations and improvements of their research. To say that scientific knowledge is provisional does not mean that the evidence accumulated to date can be ignored or is worthless. It does mean, however, that future research could always significantly alter what we currently believe. In a word, scientific knowledge is tentative. Often when people think of science and scientific knowledge, they think of scientific “laws.” A scientific law is a “generalization that was tested and confirmed through empirical verification.” 10 But these laws often have to be modified or discarded in light of new evidence. So even though political scientists strive to develop law-like generalizations, they understand and accept the fact that such statements are subject to revision.11 Sometimes efforts to investigate commonsense knowledge have surprising results. For example, given America’s high levels of literacy, the emergence of mass communications, modern transportation networks, and the steady expansion of voting rights for the last two hundred years, we might assume that participation in national elections would be high and even increase as time goes by. But, as the example in Chapter 1 suggested, neither of these conditions holds. Lots of evidence indicates that half or more of eligible Americans regularly skip voting and that the number doing so may be increasing despite all the economic and civic progress that has been made. In the studies described in Chapter 1, all of the researchers subjected their claims and explanations to empirical verification. They obser ved the phenom-

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ena they were tr ying to understand, recorded instances of the occurrence (and nonoccurrence) of these phenomena, and looked for patterns in their obser vations that were consistent with their expectations. In other words, they accumulated a body of evidence that gave other social scientists a basis for further study of the phenomena. Scientific knowledge is supposedly “value free.” Empiricism addresses what is, what might be in the future, and why. It does not typically address whether or not the existence of something is good or bad, although it may be useful in making these types of determinations. Political scientists use the words normative and nonnormative to express the distinction. Knowledge that is evaluative, value laden, and concerned with prescribing what ought to be is known as normative knowledge. Knowledge that is concerned not with evaluation or prescription but with factual or objective determinations is known as nonnormative knowledge. Most scientists would agree that science is (or should attempt to be) a nonnormative enterprise. This is not to say that empirical research operates in a valueless vacuum. A researcher’s values and interests, which are indeed subjective, affect the selection of research topics, time periods, populations, and the like. A criminologist, for example, may feel that crime is a serious problem and that long prison sentences for those who commit crimes deter would-be criminals. He or she may therefore advocate stiff mandator y sentences as a way to reduce crime. But a test of the proposition that stiff penalties reduce the crime rate should be conducted in such a way that the researcher’s values and predilections do not bias the results of the study. And it is the responsibility of other social scientists to evaluate whether or not the research meets the criteria of empirical verification. Scientific principles and methods of obser vation thus help D ISTINGUISHING E MPIRICAL both researchers and those who must evaluate FROM N ORMATIVE C LAIMS and use their findings. Note, however, that It is sometimes tricky to tell an empirical statement within the discipline of political science, as well from a normative one. The key is to infer the author’s intention: Is he or she asserting that something is as in other disciplines, the relationship between simply the way it is, no matter what anyone’s prefervalues and scientific research is frequently deence may be? Or is the person stating an opinion or a bated. We have more to say about this subject desire or an aspiration? Sometimes normative argulater in this chapter. ments contain auxiliar y verbs, such as should or ought, Even though political scientists may strive to which express an obligation or wanting and thus suggest a normative position. Empirical arguments, by minimize the impact of biases on their work, it is contrast, often use variations of to be or direct verbs to difficult, if not impossible, to achieve total objecconvey the idea that “this is the way it really is in the tivity. An additional characteristic of scientific world.” Naturally, people occasionally believe that knowledge helps to identify and weed out prejutheir values are matters of fact, but scientists must be dices (inadvertent or other wise) that may creep careful to keep the types of claims separate. into research activities.12 Scientific knowledge


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must be transmissible—that is, the methods used in making scientific discoveries must be made explicit so that others can analyze and replicate findings. The transmissibility of scientific knowledge suggests “science is a social activity in that it takes several scientists, analyzing and criticizing each other, to produce more reliable knowledge.” 13 To accept results, people must know what data were collected and how they were analyzed. A clear description of research procedures allows this independent evaluation. It also permits other scientists to collect the same information and test the original propositions themselves. If the original results are not replicated using the same procedures, they may be incorrect. This idea leads to another characteristic of scientific knowledge: it is cumulative in that both the substantive findings and research techniques are built upon the results of prior studies. As Isaac Newton famously obser ved of his own accomplishments, “I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” He meant that the attainment of his revolutionar y insights depended in part on the knowledge other scientists generated in the previous decades and centuries. This does not mean that scientific knowledge is accumulated only or primarily through the exact repetition of earlier studies. Often, research procedures are changed intentionally to see whether similar results are obtained under different conditions. Consider an example. Two studies examined the connection between television violence and antisocial behavior among children.14 In the first study researchers compared aggressive behavior among children in two Canadian towns. One of the towns had TV reception; the other did not. Surprisingly, the researchers found that younger children (ages eleven and twelve) living in the town with access to television were less, not more, aggressive. (Among older children—ages fifteen and sixteen—there was no difference.) This research was subsequently criticized because the two towns were not closely matched socioeconomically and because other factors related to aggressiveness among children, such as differences in school discipline, were not considered. A second study then followed involving children in a single town. The children were divided into “high” and “low” TV viewers. The high TV viewers were found to be slightly more aggressive than the low TV viewers. Yet even this study was flawed, because no attempt was made to assess the amount of violence actually seen on TV by the high viewers. Low viewers could have watched particularly violent programs, so the difference between the groups would have been minimized. The method of measuring aggressiveness also was suspect. But the point is that these supposed deficiencies could readily be detected because the research procedures were clearly described. Thus shortcomings in a research design often lead others to doubt the results, prompting them to devise their own tests. This would not be possible, however, if researchers did not specify their research strategy and methods. Such descriptions permit a better assessment of results and allow others to

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make adjustments in design and measurement when pursuing further study. The results of these new studies can then be compared with the earlier results. This process produces an accumulated body of knowledge about the phenomena in question. Another important characteristic of scientific knowledge is that it is general, or applicable to many rather than just a few cases. Advocates of the scientific method argue that knowledge that describes, explains, and predicts many phenomena or a set of similar occurrences is more valuable than knowledge that addresses a single phenomenon.15 For example, the knowledge that states with easier voter registration systems have higher election turnout rates than states with more difficult systems is preferable to the knowledge that Wisconsin has a higher turnout rate than Alabama. Knowing that party affiliation strongly influences many voters’ choices among candidates is more useful knowledge to someone seeking to understand elections than is the simple fact that John Doe, a Democrat, voted for a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2006. The knowledge that a state that has a safety inspection program has a lower automobile fatality rate than another state, which does not, is less useful information to a legislator considering the worth of mandator y inspection programs than is the knowledge that states that require automobile inspections experience lower average fatality rates than those that do not. A statement that communicates general knowledge is called an empirical generalization. An empirical generalization summarizes relationships between individual facts. 16 For example, the generalization that states with easier voter registration systems have higher turnout rates than states with more burdensome systems connects information about voter registration systems and voter turnout rates in individual states and summarizes that information in a broad proposition that can be used as the basis for policy debate or further investigation. Another characteristic of scientific knowlT HE U SES OF R EPLICATION edge is that it is explanator y, that is, it provides When picking a research topic, keep in mind a basic premise of scientific investigation: independent verifia systematic, empirically verified understanding cation. If you come across a claim based on research of why a phenomenon occurs. In scientific disthat you find interesting or provocative or contrar y to course the term explanation has various meancommon sense, you might attempt to replicate at least ings, but when we say that knowledge is expart of the study. Suppose, for example, that a newspaplanator y we are saying that a conclusion can be per reports that the public generally favors a certain policy, but you suspect that the results are misleading derived (logically) from a set of general propobecause of the way the questions were worded or the sitions and specific initial conditions. The gencircumstances in which they were asked. You might eral propositions assert that when things of type be able to replicate the study by using a different set X occur, they will be followed by things of of data. In other words, don’t hesitate to study a probtype Y. An initial condition might specify that lem that has already been well researched. X has in fact occurred. The obser vation of Y is


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then explained by the conjunction of the condition and the proposition. The goal of explanation is, sometimes, to account for a particular event—the demise of the Soviet Union, for example—but more often it is to explain general classes of phenomena such as wars or revolutions or voting behavior. Explanation, then, answers “why” and “how” kinds of questions. The questions may be specific, as, for instance, “Why did a particular event take place at a particular time?” or more general, as, for example, “Why do upper-class people vote more regularly than, say, blue-collar workers?” Obser ving and describing facts is, of course, important. But most political scientists want more than mere facts. They are usually interested in identifying the factors that account for or explain human behavior. Studies of turnout are valuable because they do more than simply describe particular election results; they offer an explanation of political behavior in general. An especially important kind of explanation for science is that which asserts causality between two events or trends. A causal relation means that in some sense the emergence or presence of one condition or event will always (or with high probability) bring about another. Causation implies more than one thing follows another: instead, it means one necessarily follows the other. It is one thing to say that economic status is somehow related to the level of political participation. It is quite another to assert that economics determines or causes behavior. Statements asserting cause and effect are generally considered more informative and perhaps useful than ones simply stating an unexplained connection exists. After all, there may be a relationship between the birthrate in countries and the size of their stork populations. But this connection is purely coincidental. We discuss causality in more detail in Chapter 5. In this vein, explanator y knowledge is also important because it can be predictive by offering systematic, reasoned anticipation of future events. Note that prediction based on explanation is not the same as forecasting or soothsaying or astrology, which do not rest on empirically verified explanations. An explanation gives scientific reasons or justifications—for why a certain outcome is to be expected. In fact, many scientists consider the ultimate test of an explanation to be its usefulness in prediction. Prediction is an extremely valuable type of knowledge, since it may be used to avoid undesirable and costly events and to achieve desired outcomes. Of course, whether or not a prediction is “useful” is a normative question. Consider, for example, a government that uses scientific research to predict the outbreak of domestic violence but uses the knowledge not to alleviate the underlying conditions but to suppress the discontented with force. In political science, explanations rarely account for all the variation observed in attributes or behavior. So exactly how accurate, then, do scientific explanations have to be? Do they have to account for or predict phenomena 100 percent of the time? Most political scientists, like scientists in other disciplines,

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accept probabilistic explanation, in which it is not necessary to explain or predict a phenomenon with 100 percent accuracy. At this point we should acknowledge that many explanations and predictions in political science are weak or even false. Indeed some have so many counterinstances that they do not seem worthy of the designation scientific, and many critics rightfully point out that the social sciences have never come close to the rigor and precision of the natural sciences. For this reason, philosophers and methodologists maintain that social scientists cannot achieve the exactitude and precision of the natural sciences and that instead they should attempt not to explain behavior but to understand it.17 Needless to say, we do not entirely agree with this view; but later in the chapter we acknowledge that this position has merits. Scientists also recognize another characteristic of scientific knowledge, parsimony, or simplicity. Suppose, for instance, two researchers have developed explanations of why some people trust and follow authoritarian leaders. The first account mentions only the immediate personal social and economic situation of the individuals, whereas the second account accepts these factors but also adds deep-seated psychological states stemming from traumatic childhood experiences. And imagine that both provide equally compelling accounts and predictions of behavior. Yet, since the first relies on fewer explanator y factors than the second, it will generally be the preferred explanation, all other things being equal. This is the principle of Ockham’s razor, which might be summed up as “keep explanations as simple as possible.”

The Importance of Theory The accumulation of related explanations sometimes leads to the creation of a theor y—that is, a body of statements that systematize knowledge of, and explain, phenomena. Stated differently, theories help “organize, systematize, and coordinate existing knowledge” in a unified explanator y framework.18 A theor y about a subject such as war or voting or bureaucracy consists of several components: a set of “primitive” terms (words and concepts whose meanings are taken for granted); assumptions or axioms about some of the subject matter; explicit definitions of key concepts; a commitment to a particular set of empirical tools such as sur vey research (that is, polling) or document analysis; and, most important, general, verifiable statements that explain the subject matter. Two crucial aspects of empirical theor y are (1) that it leads to specific, testable predictions and (2) that the more obser vations there are to support these predictions, the more the theor y is confirmed. To clarify some of these matters, let us take a quick look at an example. The “proximity theor y of electoral choice” provides a concise explanation for why voters choose parties and candidates.19 Superficially the theor y may seem simplistic. Its simplicity can be deceiving, however, for it rests on


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many years of multidisciplinar y research20 and involves considerProximities on Abortion Issue able sophisticated thinking.21 But Candidates essentially the theory boils down to the assertion that people support A B C par ties and candidates who are “closest” to them on policy issues. Take a particularly simple case. Suppose we consider the abortion Always Middle point Never debate. Positions on this issue might be arrayed along a single continuum running from, say, “Abortion should Voter 1 Voter 2 always be allowed” to “Abor tion should never be permitted” (see Voters Figure 2-1). Proximity theorists believe that both voters and candidates (or parties) can be placed or located on this scale and, consequently, that the distances or proximities between them (voters and candidates) can be compared. The theor y’s prediction is straightfor ward: an individual votes for the candidate to whom he or she lies closest. To expand a bit, theorists in this camp argue (1) that analysts using proper measurement techniques can position both issues and candidates on scales that show how “close” they are to each other and to other objects and (2) that voters vote for candidates who are closest (most proximate) to themselves. People choose nearby candidates out of their desire to maximize utility, or the value that results from one choice over another. Knowing this fact, candidates adjust their behavior to maximize the votes they receive. Adjusting behavior means not only taking or moving to positions as close as possible to the average or typical voter (the so-called median voter) but also, if and when necessar y, obscuring one’s true position (that is, following a strategy of ambiguity).22 Figure 2-1, for instance, shows that Voter 1’s position is closest to Candidate B’s; therefore, Voter 1 would presumably vote for that candidate. Similarly Voter 2 would prefer Candidate C. Note also that Candidate A could attract Voter 1’s support by moving closer to the middle, perhaps by campaigning on an “abortion-only-in-certain-circumstances” platform. The proximity theor y has many of the characteristics of an empirical theor y. It explains why things happen as they do, and it offers specific and testable predictions. It is also an implicitly causal theor y in that it hypothesizes that the desire to maximize utility “causes” voters to support specific candidates. It is general since it claims to apply to any election in any place at any time. As such, it provides a much more sweeping explanation of voting than a theor y that uses time- and place-bounded terms such as “the 2006 FIGURE 2-1

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gubernatorial election in Pennsylvania.” In addition, it provides a parsimonious or relatively simple account of candidate choice. It does not invoke additional explanator y factors such as psychological or mental states, social class membership, or current economic conditions to describe the voting act. Most important, although the proximity theor y rests on considerable formal (and abstract) economic and decision-making reasoning, it puts itself on the line by making specific empirical predictions. As a theor y, it incorporates or uses numerous primitive or undefined terms such as issue, candidate, and utility. These words and concepts may have wellaccepted dictionar y meanings, but the theor y itself takes their common understanding for granted. When a theor y is challenged, part of the dispute might involve slightly divergent interpretations of these terms. At the same time the theor y makes explicit various other assumptions. It assumes among other things that a researcher can place individuals on issue dimensions, that people occupy these positions for reasonably long time periods, that voters are rational in that they maximize utility, and that candidates have objective positions on these issues.23 Moreover, by assumption, certain possibilities are not considered. The theor y does not delve into the question of whether or not a person holds a “correct” position on the scale, given his or her objective interests. Finally, to test the proximity or spatial idea, researchers assume that one can assign individuals meaningful spatial positions by asking certain kinds of questions on sur veys or polls.24 This may be a perfectly reasonable assumption (we touch on that matter in Chapter 10), but it is an assumption nevertheless. Still, spatial modelers, as they are called, go to lengths to define and explain key concepts. How distance is defined is a serious matter because different definitions can lead to different substantive conclusions.25 And, as we noted earlier, the theor y establishes clear hypotheses. Consider, for example, Voter 1 in Figure 2-1. The theor y predicts that this person will vote for Candidate B, not A or C, because that candidate is closest. Voter 2, on the other hand, is closest to C and will vote for that candidate. All of these predictions can be checked with appropriate sur vey data. No theor y rests entirely on “facts” because it invariably contains unproven or unexamined definitions and statements. These assumptions may be based on previous usage and research, but the theor y does not address them directly, except possibly to acknowledge their existence. For example, a theor y of war might assert that one nation will attack another one if conditions X, Y, and Z hold. In making this argument, however, the theor y may use words and ideas (e.g., aggression, nation state, balance of power) that go undefined; or it may assume that the best way to see if the conditions apply is to use certain historical documents. Hence, if the theor y’s main assertion—if conditions X, Y, and Z occur, an armed conflict follows—may fail to explain or predict the


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occurrence of a specific war because (1) the theor y itself is just wrong, (2) one or more of its underlying concepts or assumptions is incorrect or ambiguous, or (3) both (1) and (2) are correct (the most likely case). This characteristic means that scientific theories are provisional, that is, always subject to revision and change. In fact, according to the philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn, most “normal” activity in science involves checking the adequacy and implications of existing theories.26 Thus new obser vations, more accurate measurements, improved research design, and the testing of alternative explanations may reveal the limitations or empirical inadequacies of a theor y. In this case, the theor y will have to be modified or rejected.27 One of the excitements of reading scholarly literature is to witness the battle of clashing theories.28 Theories are sometimes described by their explanator y range, or the breadth of the phenomena they purport to explain. Usually one does not have a theor y of “why George Bush won the 2004 presidential election.” (It is, of course possible to find several theories that account for this particular outcome. But note that 2004 election results are an instance, or “token,” of the kind of event with which these theories deal.) Instead, a good theor y of electoral outcomes presumably pertains to more than simply the 2004 contest but also to other elections in other times and places. In the social sciences, socalled narrow-gauge or middle-range theories pertain to limited classes of events or behaviors such as a theor y of voting behavior or a theor y about the role of revolution in political development.29 Thus a theor y of voting may explain voter turnout by proposing factors that affect people’s perceptions of the costs and benefits of voting: socioeconomic class, degree of partisanship, the ease of registration and voting laws, choices among candidates, availability of election news in the media, and so forth.30 Global or broad-range theories, by contrast, claim to describe and account for an entire body of human behavior. Hence, we find theories of “international relations” or “the rise and fall of civilizations.” 31 In short, theories play a prominent role in natural and social sciences because they provide general accounts of phenomena. 32 Indeed, other things being equal, the broader the range of the things to be explained, the more valuable the theor y. We can see the utility of theor y building in the work of Bruce A. Williams and Albert R. Matheny, who evaluated several competing theories in their examination of variations in state regulation of hazardous waste disposal.33 Regulation of hazardous waste disposal is an example of social regulation, regulation that imposes costs on a specific group to benefit the public or some segment of it. Improper waste disposal imposes costs on the environment and human health. These costs, known as negative externalities, are not reflected in the price of a product. Put somewhat differently, the people who produce and use the products that generate hazardous waste do not pay the costs that arise when improper storage of that waste threatens the community. Avoiding

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or preventing negative externalities by requiring safe disposal of hazardous waste means imposing substantial costs on industr y. There are at least three theories to explain and predict the amount or nature of waste disposal regulation enacted by the states. According to economic theor y, negative externalities are a type of market failure, because the market fails to deal with the problem in that the price of goods does not reflect their true cost. When this happens, government regulation of the market becomes justified and necessar y. The market failure theor y of government regulation predicts that social regulation is related to the severity of the market failure and that the costs to regulated industries should be equal to the costs or harms created by unsafe hazardous waste disposal. Others argue that social regulation corresponds to more than just the presence or magnitude of market failures. They claim that social regulation is the result of political behavior and political influence. This theor y predicts that exaggerated claims about dangers imposed by market failures must be made in order to generate public awareness, “moral outrage,” and thence support for regulation. Consequently, the resulting regulations impose unnecessarily high costs on industr y. The flip side of this theor y has industr y opposing regulation and dominating the regulator y process by threatening economic slowdown, unemployment, even change of location. The political strength of an industr y is related to its impor tance to the economy and to the level of government considering the regulation. Threats to relocate have a greater impact at the local or state level than at the national level. Thus regulation may be related to conditions of industr y dominance, not the extent of market failure or actual pollution. A third theor y states that, although industr y dominates the regulator y process, it does not necessarily oppose all regulation. According to this view, industr y supports regulation as long as the costs of regulation can be shifted to government and away from industr y. This regulator y outcome is called the socialization of the costs of production and is predicted by neo-Mar xists, who maintain that many private industries could not make a profit without evading actual production costs. They also argue that effective regulation and avoidance of negative externalities is not possible without fundamental institutional reform of both government and the economy. We have, then, three quite different theories of why and how much government regulation of hazardous waste disposal occurs. Each theor y has something different to say about the power of public interest groups and industr y groups and the outcome of social regulator y efforts. The conflicting beliefs about the politics they represent fuel many a debate about environmental regulations and the performance of government and the economy. Researchers investigating examples of social regulation may be far more interested in determining which


39


of these theories seems to fit with the obser ved data than in the actual amount and consequence of a specific regulator y program. In fact, researchers may become quite attached to a particular theor y and be convinced that it is the correct theor y. But theor y builders must not forget the basic standards for judging scientific theories: Are assumptions and axioms clearly separated from substantive propositions and hypotheses? Can the claims be verified or falsified? Are they empirical, not normative? Do they provide general explanations and add to existing knowledge? Are their statements transmissible to others? And, are they parsimonious?

Acquiring Empirical Knowledge: The Scientific Method What produces scientific knowledge? What, in other words, is the type of thinking that leads to knowledge with the authoritative label scientific? Is there one valid path to scientific truth or can it be reached from different starting points? In reality, no scientist in the field or laborator y adheres to a prescribed set of steps like someone following a script. They rely on not just formal procedures, but intuition, imagination, and even luck at times. Nevertheless, we may conceptualize what they do by identifying the underlying logic of their activities. Here is a brief reconstruction of an ideal research program: ■ Develop an idea to investigate or a problem to solve. A scientist gets

topics from any number of sources including literature about a subject, general obser vation, intuition (or hunch), the existence of conflicts or anomalies in reported research findings, or the implications of an established theor y. For example, newspaper accounts suggest that evangelical Christians tend to support conser vative candidates because of “moral values.” Several research questions are raised by these accounts: Do evangelicals behave in politics differently than do other religious groups? Do evangelicals turn out to vote more in elections where there are distinct differences between candidates on moral issues than in elections where the differences are small? ■ Hypothesis formation. After selecting a topic, an investigator tries to

translate the idea or problem into a series of specific hypotheses. As we see in Chapter 3, hypotheses are tentative statements that, if confirmed, show how and why one thing is related to another or why a condition comes into existence. These statements have to be worded unambiguously and in a way that their specific claims can be evaluated by commonly accepted procedures. After all, one of the requirements of science is for others to be able to independently corroborate a discover y. If

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assertions are not completely transparent, how can someone else verify them? In the preceding example, we might hypothesize that evangelical Christians are more likely than others to base their vote on candidates’ positions on moral issues or that evangelical Christians are more likely than other voters to vote for conser vative candidates. ■ Research. This is where the rubber meets the road: the essence of sci-

ence comes in the empirical testing of hypotheses through the collection and analysis of data. We need to define in operational and understandable terms the concepts moral values, conservative, and evangelical Christian. We might, for instance, tentatively identify evangelicals as people who attend certain churches, moral values as attitudes toward abortion and gay marriage, and support for conser vatives as voting for Republican candidates for state and national office. It would be possible (but not necessarily easy) to write a series of questions to be administered in a sur vey or poll to elicit this information. If this operational hypothesis holds water, we would expect certain responses (for example, opposition to gay marriage) to be associated with certain behaviors (for example, voting for Republicans). ■ Decision. The logical next step is to see whether or not the obser ved re-

sults are consistent with the hypotheses. Simple in principle, judging how well data support scientific hypotheses is usually not an easy matter. Suppose, for example, we find that 75 percent of evangelical Christians opposed gay marriage and 90 percent of these individuals voted for a Republican House candidate in 2006. So far, so good. But suppose, in addition, that 70 percent of non-evangelicals also oppose gay marriage and that more than 90 percent of these people also voted Republican in the same election. It appears that attitudes might be affecting voting, but this does not necessarily establish a connection between religious preference and political behavior. When it comes to weighing quantitative or statistical evidence, this step requires expertise, practice, and knowledge of the subject matter plus good judgment and is often difficult to teach. Still, chapters in this book are devoted to showing ways to make valid inferences about tenability of empirical hypotheses. ■ Modification and extension. Depending on the outcome of the test one can

tentatively accept, abandon, or modify the hypotheses. If the results are favorable, it might be possible to derive new predictions to investigate. If, however, the data do not or only very weakly support the hypotheses, it will be necessary to modify or discard them. Let us stress here that negative results—that is, those that do not support a particular hypothesis— can still be interesting or helpful.34 As we suggested earlier, some scholars such as Popper believe that science advances by disproving claims,


41


not by accepting them. Consequently, a valuable contribution to science can come from disconfirming widely held beliefs, and the only way to do that is by replicating or reinvestigating the research upon which the beliefs rest. The key is not so much the result of a hypothesis test as how substantively important the hypothesis is to begin with. In essence the scientific method entails using quantitative or qualitative data to test specific propositions. But exactly how does one use evidence to establish a hypothesis? What kind of thinking is involved?

Deduction and Induction Most people probably believe that scientists prove their results. But the term prove may be too strong because it suggests that a conclusion cannot possibly be wrong. Of course, in some areas of science, such as mathematics, the proper application of logic guarantees the truthfulness of a proposition. This type of reasoning is called deduction. A valid deductive argument is one in which, if the premises are true, the conclusion must necessarily be true as well. The classic example is the syllogism: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal. The conclusion (the sentence below the line) must be true if the premises (the statements above the line) are true. In this example, if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, how could he not be mortal? Whether or not the premises are true is immaterial to the validity of the reasoning. In a valid deduction, it is the structure of the argument that counts: if the conditions (“All men. . .”) are true and the argument is stated correctly, then the conclusion must be true. As noted earlier, a common application of deductive reasoning is found in mathematics, in which theorems are deduced from a set of premises assumed to be or having been established as true. Deductive arguments find their way into political science, too. Social scientists have attempted to develop many axiomatic or deductive accounts of voting, group and coalition behavior, decision making, or the outbreak of war. For example, voters are motivated to vote on the basis of the costs and benefits to them of the policies espoused by the candidates in an election. If this premise is true and large policy differences exist between candidates in an election, then turnout in the election will be high because voter motivation will be higher than it is in elections in which there are small policy differences.

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A more common type of reasoning is induction. Induction refers to the process of drawing an inference from a set of premises and obser vations. This type of reasoning differs from deduction because the premises do not guarantee the conclusion but instead lend support to it. An inductive argument, in other words, does not rely on formal proof but rather gives us (more or less solid) reasons for believing in the conclusion’s truthfulness. A common type of inductive argument in the social sciences is one that makes a generalization on the basis of a sample. An argument based on sampling, for instance, has the following general form:35 In a particular sample, X percent of A’s are B’s. X percent of all A’s are B’s. One might argue, for instance, that 75 (X) percent of those people in a sample of Americans who attend church more than once a week (A) think that the Bible is the literal word of God (B). Then, you would have some reason to believe (but would not have proved deductively) that in the population as a whole 75 percent of frequent church attendees will regard the Bible as the actual word of God. This is, in effect, the kind of argumentation used by pollsters who want to make a generalization about a population based on the results of a sample. For us to accept the argument, we must have confidence in the sampling and analysis procedures. But even if we do, there is no assurance that the conclusion is true. It might seem probable or likely, but we have not demonstrated it conclusively. Another type of inductive argument is the use of analogy or similarity to establish a point.36 Here’s an example. Imagine that you have made the following three obser vations. First, the Bemba of south-central Africa live a life of marginal subsistence consisting of nine months of abundance and three months of hunger. Despite deplorable conditions, there is no outbreak of violence or protest within the tribe during the three-month hunger period.37 Second, the income of African Americans compared with that of whites of equal education rose rapidly during the 1940s and early 1950s but then declined precipitously so that half the relative gains were lost by 1960. Subsequently, violence broke out among blacks living in U.S. urban areas in the 1960s.38 Third, political violence in Europe occurred during the growth of industrial and commercial centers, even though alternatives to the peasant’s hard life emerged at the same time.39 In the first and second case studies, the objective well-being of the population declined, but only in the second instance did violence break out. In the third case study, there was no decline in the objective well-being of the population, yet violence occurred. Let’s assume that in seeking an explanation in


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the first case, you reason that the cycle of the seasons and its ensuing periods of feast and famine had been experienced for many years and was unlikely to change. In the second case you reason that African Americans expected to maintain the economic gains they had made in the previous decade. And in the third case you reason that during the period of emerging industrialization, all people expected to improve their living conditions, yet some members of society gained much more than others from the increased industr y and commerce. Based on this reasoning, you could conclude that the second and third cases were similar because a discrepancy existed between expected and actual conditions, whereas in the first case there was no discrepancy. From this you might conclude that a large discrepancy or gap between expected and actual economic gains causes discontent, which in turn leads to violence. Thus you might develop a theor y of relative deprivation from a few obser vations of specific cases of deprivation and violence.

The Scientific Method at Work Generally speaking, it is difficult to point to examples of pure induction, since often a researcher starts with a hunch and then collects information that he or she expects will show certain patterns in line with that hunch. While not a full-blown theor y, a hunch places the researcher farther along in his or her investigation than obser vation alone. In practice, science is an iterative process that typically employs several kinds of reasoning and arguments. Thus a researcher may star t with a well-established theor y and deduce certain phenomena that he or she will attempt to obser ve. If the obser vations are not quite what were expected, some modification of the theor y will be made and the revised theor y subjected to further testing. Sometimes the theor y may have to be discarded and, on the basis of observations, a new theor y induced. A good example is found in the work of two researchers studying news coverage and social trust.40 For some time psychologists Stephen Holloway and Har vey A. Hornstein had been studying social trust by obser ving the rate at which people returned wallets dropped on New York City streets to the addresses of the owners identified inside. The researchers would periodically drop wallets in various locations and wait and see how many were returned. Typically, half the wallets dropped were eventually returned. However, one day something happened that had never happened before: none of the wallets was returned. This unexpected result led Holloway and Hornstein to search for a plausible explanation. They set out to develop an explanation based on an obser vation—that is, they proceeded to the process of induction. It so happened that on this particular day in June 1968 Robert Kennedy, a senator from New York and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was assassinated. The investigators wondered if Kennedy’s assassina-

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tion could have something to do with the failure to return any of the wallets. Perhaps the news coverage of the event made people upset, mistrustful of strangers, and unwilling to help people they did not know or had not seen. Holloway and Hornstein hypothesized that exposure to “bad” news makes people less socially trusting and cooperative. To test this hypothesis the researchers devised a series of experiments in which people were divided into two groups and were subtly exposed to “bad” or “good” news broadcasts. Then they were asked to reveal their attitudes toward other people and to play a game with other people that allowed observation of their degree of cooperation. Holloway and Hornstein were testing a general theor y with research designed to measure the occurrence of certain predicted obser vations—that is, they were using deduction. The experiments demonstrated that those exposed to bad news were, indeed, less socially trusting and cooperative, confirming the researchers’ hypothesis. Both induction and deduction had been involved in accumulating an empirical, verifiable, transmissible, explanator y, general (yet provisional) body of evidence regarding an important social phenomenon. Applying an existing theor y to new situations, deciding which phenomena to obser ve and how to measure them, and developing a theor y that explains many more things than the specific obser vations that led to its discover y are all creative enterprises. Unfortunately, it is difficult to teach creativity. But being aware of the general tenets of science will help make your own evaluation and conduct of research more worthwhile.

Is Political Science Really “Science”? We have implied throughout this chapter that politics can and should be studied scientifically. Some people question this position, however, because the discipline involves the study of human political behavior, and studying people—as opposed to material objects such as atoms or stars—raises all sorts of complexities. As a consequence, compared with the natural sciences, progress in developing and testing political empirical theories has been agonizingly slow. It is no surprise, then, that scientists and nonscientists alike often obser ve that both the methods and the content of political science have not come even close to the exactitude and depth of sciences such as biology or physics, and consequently nowhere can we find empirical generalizations with the level of precision and confirmation enjoyed by, say, Einstein’s theories of relativity. Moreover, if political science is a science in the same way that the natural sciences are, behavior must ultimately be describable by contingent causal laws.41 Yet if human beings do not act predictably, or if their actions are not susceptible to description by general laws, political scientists, acting as scientists, encounter serious problems.


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We can identify two objections to treating political science as a subdivision of science in general. The first we might term logistical or practical. The other is more philosophical.42

Practical Objections The search for regularities in behavior assumes that men and women act consistently and in a discoverable manner. Nonetheless, even if we accept that individuals are generally predictable, some persons may deliberately act in unpredictable or misleading ways. This problem is occasionally encountered among subjects “cooperating” in a research project. For example, a subject may figure out that he or she is part of an experiment to test a theor y about how people behave when put in a difficult or stressful or confusing situation. He or she may then act in a way not predicted by, or in conflict with, the theor y. Or the subject may tr y to conform to what he or she thinks the researcher is looking for. Similarly, people may never reveal what is really on their minds or what they have done in the past or would do in the future. In other words, our ability to accurately obser ve the attributes of people can at times be severely limited. It is, for instance, frequently difficult to measure and explain illegal or socially unacceptable behaviors such as drug use. Measurement problems also arise because the concepts of interest to many political scientists are abstract and value laden. Chapter 1 showed that a phrase as seemingly straightfor ward as “the number of eligible voters” can present problems that affect our substantive conclusions about how civic minded Americans are. Or consider unemployment, a seemingly unambiguous concept. One measure of unemployment takes into account persons who are out of work but actively seeking employment. An argument may be made that such a measure greatly underestimates unemployment because it does not include those who are so discouraged by their failure to find a job that they are no longer actively seeking work. Finding an adequate definition of poverty can be just as difficult, because people live in different types of households and have available different kinds of support beyond just their obser ved income. What one scholar may feel constitutes poverty another may see as nothing more than acceptable hardship. Furthermore, political scientists must face the fact that consistent and rational human behavior is complex, perhaps even more complex than the subject matter of other sciences (genes, subatomic particles, insects, and so on). Complexity has been a significant obstacle to the discover y of general theories that accurately explain and predict almost ever y kind of behavior. After all, developing a theor y with broad applicability requires the identification and specification of innumerable variables and the linkages among them. Consequently, when a broad theor y is proposed, it can be attacked on the grounds that it is too simple or that too many exceptions to it exist. Certainly

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to date no empirically verified generalizations in political science match the simplicity and explanator y power of Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc2.43 There are other practical obstacles.44 The data needed to test explanations and theories may be extremely hard to obtain. People with the needed information may not want to release it for political or personal reasons. Or they may not want to answer potentially embarrassing or threatening questions honestly or completely. Pollsters, for instance, find refusal to answer certain questions, such as attitudes toward ethnic groups, to be a major problem in gauging public opinion. Similarly, some experiments require manipulation of people. But since humans are the subjects, the researchers must contend with ethical considerations that might preclude them from obtaining all the information they want. Asking certain questions can interfere with privacy rights, and exposing subjects to certain stimuli might put the participants at physical or emotional risk. Tempting someone to commit a crime, to take an obvious case, might tell a social scientist a lot about adherence to the law but would be unacceptable nevertheless. All these claims about the difficulty of studying political behavior scientifically have merit. Yet they can be overstated. Consider, for example, that scientists studying natural phenomena encounter many of the same problems. Paleontologists must attempt to explain events that occurred millions or even billions of years ago. Astronomers and geologists cannot mount repeated experiments on most of the phenomena of greatest interest to them. They certainly cannot visit many of the places they study most intensively, like other planets or the center of the earth. And what can be more complex than organisms and their components, which consist of thousands of compounds and chemical interactions? Stated quite simply, it is in no way clear that severe practical problems distinguish political science from any of the other sciences.

Philosophical Objections Before moving on, we want to emphasize again that the scientific method is not the only path to knowledge. In fact, some scholars believe that because the social sciences attempt to explain human actions—that is, behavior that is done for reasons—and not mere physical movement, they face challenges not encountered in the natural sciences. Opponents of the empirical approach claim that scientific methods do not explain nearly as much about behavior as their practitioners think. The problem, one set of critics argues, is that to understand human behavior one must tr y to see the world the way individuals do. (These are the interpretationists, mentioned earlier.) And doing so requires empathy, or the ability to identify and in some sense experience the subjective moods or feelings or thoughts of those being studied. Instead of acting as outside, objective observers, we need to “see” how individuals themselves


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view their actions. For only by reaching this level of understanding can we hope to answer “why” questions such as “why did John vote Democratic in the last election” or “why did this group revolt against the duly elected government?” The answers require the interpretation of behavior, not its scientific explanation in terms of general laws. In short, interpretation means decoding verbal and physical actions, which is a much different task than proposing and testing hypotheses. Indeed, some objections to the application of science to the study of human behavior go even further for they raise the question of what constitutes scientific knowledge. Empiricists, as we have suggested, take reality pretty much as a given. That is, the objects they study—elections, wars, constitutions, government agencies—have an existence independent of obser vers and can be studied more or less objectively. But an alternative perspective that since the 1970s has taken root in political science and international relations theor y is called the social construction of reality or constructionism. 45 Constructivists, as supporters of the theor y are called, claim that humans do not simply discover knowledge of the real world through a neutral process like the scientific method but rather create it. In other words, instead of knowing reality directly in its unvarnished or pure form, our perceptions, understandings, and beliefs about many “facts” stem largely, if not entirely, from human cultural and historical experiences and practices. We put facts in quotation marks in this context to stress the constructionist belief that what people often assume to be pure facts are conditioned by the obser vers’ perceptions, experiences, opinions, and similar mental states. This position is perhaps another way of saying, “facts do not speak for themselves but are always interpreted or constructed by humans in specific historical times and settings.” One version of this position admits that entities (for example, molecules, planets) exist separately from anyone’s thoughts about them, but it also insists that much of what people take for granted as being “real” or “true” of the world is built from learning and interaction with others and does not have an existence apart from human thought.46 Consider the term Democratic Party. Instead of having an independent, material existence like an electron or a strand of DNA, a political party exists only because citizens behave as if it did exist. This means that two individuals who come from dif ferent social, historical, and cultural backgrounds may not comprehend and respond to the term in the same way. What is important in studying, say, the individuals’ responses to Democratic candidates is fathoming their personal beliefs and attitudes about the party. Constructionist thinking now plays a strong role in international relations theor y, where a concept such as anarchy is not considered a “given and immutable” cause of the behavior of states (for example, their desire for security through power politics). Rather, terms like this one have to be understood as what actors (individuals, states) make of them.47

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The constructionist viewpoint, which comes in innumerable varieties, challenges the idea of an objective epistemology, or theor y of knowledge. Such ideas, however, are of a deeply methodological nature and raise deep philosophical issues that go well beyond the task of describing the empirical methods used in the discipline.48 We thus acknowledge that the scientific study of politics is controversial but nevertheless maintain that the procedures we describe in the chapters that follow are widely accepted and can in many circumstances lead to valuable understandings of political processes and behavior. Moreover, they have greatly shaped the research agenda and teaching of the discipline, as can be seen by looking at the evolution of the field in the twentieth centur y.

A Brief Histor y of Political Science as a Discipline Steven B. Smith wrote, “From its ver y beginnings political science has been a complex disciple torn in conflicting directions.” 49 The histor y of the field can be divided into roughly four periods: the traditional era, the behavioral or empirical “revolution,” the reaction to the rise of the behavioral perspective, and the contemporar y period of accommodation.

The Era of Traditional Political Science Traditional political science, which grew out of the study of law, institutions, and ethics, flourished until the early 1960s. It emphasized historical, legalistic, and institutional subjects.50 The historical emphasis produced detailed descriptions of the developments leading to political events and practices. Legalism, in contrast, involved the study of constitutions and legal codes, and the concentration on institutions included studies of the powers and functions of political institutions such as legislatures, bureaucracies, and courts. In general, traditional political science focused on formal governments and their legally defined powers. Legal and historical documents, including laws, constitutions, proclamations, and treaties, were studied to trace the development of international organizations and key concepts such as sovereignty, the state, federalism, and imperialism. Informal political processes—the exercise of informal power and the internal dynamics of institutions, for example— were frequently ignored. In the heyday of the traditional approach (roughly 1930 to 1960), the study of politics was usually taught in the history and philosophy departments of colleges and universities. Political theories concerning human nature and politics, the purpose and most desirable form of government, and the philosophy of law were the province of philosophy departments. When separate departments did appear, they were frequently called departments of government, reflecting the


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emphasis on formal structures rather than on political processes and behavior. In fact, some universities still have government departments. Since scientific methodology did not inform most of the study of government, traditional political science was primarily descriptive rather than explanator y. Most of its practitioners did not feel a need to conduct research that had the characteristics of the so-called hard sciences, which were often deemed inapplicable to social behavior and institutions. Critics were later to charge that the traditional school lacked rigor and generality and that, although theorists occasionally came up with intriguing and well-reasoned verbal theories, these discoveries were usually not subjected to rigorous and extensive empirical verification.

The Empirical Revolution The emergence of the scientific study of politics in the United States after World War II, and especially in the late 1950s, can be attributed to several developments.51 First, many of the European social scientists and theorists who emigrated to the United States in the 1930s were skilled in the use of new, scientific research methods.52 Second, war-related social research in the following decade promoted the exchange of ideas among scientifically minded persons from the disciplines of political science, sociology, psychology, and economics. In fact, considerable evidence indicates that the U.S. government looked to colleges and universities for scientific social science research that would be of use in fighting the cold war against the Soviet Union.53 In addition, systematic research was aided by two related developments: the collection of large amounts of empirical data and the development of computers to store and process this information. For example, beginning in the late 1930s Paul F. Lazarsfeld pioneered the use of large-scale sample sur veys or polls to study voting behavior and continued to refine the technique while working for the federal government during World War II. After the war he applied sur vey research methods to his study of the 1948 and 1952 presidential elections.54 In these endeavors Lazarsfeld and others were influenced by the developing field of market research. This development makes sense if one thinks of voters as consumers who must choose among competing products (that is, candidates). Once the use of sur vey research got under way, the field exploded and is now perhaps the most common source of knowledge about politics in the United States and abroad.55 Moreover, as the empirical school ascended, sister disciplines in the social sciences began to investigate political problems and ultimately helped shape the content and methods of political science. A classic example is Anthony Downs’s An Economic Theory of Democracy. As his title suggests, Downs (an economist) applied many concepts from economic theor y to develop a formal

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model of voting and party behavior. His reasoning depended on concepts such as “utility maximization” and “indifference.” (One surprising conclusion was that under most circumstances it is irrational for individuals to vote in any but the ver y smallest elections. Similarly, the statistical methods used by economists, called econometrics, also played a critical role in the newer political science. Indeed, statistics is now deemed to be so essential to the field that practically ever y graduate student must take at least a one-year course in applied statistics. In the same vein, sociology, psychology, and anthropology have all influenced political scientists. Indeed, looking at the sway of other disciplines makes one appreciate the multidisciplinar y nature of the field. The important point, however, is that unlike the traditional school, the newer approach consciously embraces the spirit of scientific inquir y, as illustrated by David B. Easton’s influential 1967 article, “The Current Meaning of ‘Behavioralism.’ ” There are discoverable uniformities in political behavior. These can be expressed in generalizations or theories with explanatory and predictive value. Means for acquiring and interpreting data . . . need to be examined self-consciously, refined, and validated. Precision in the recording of data and the statement of findings requires measurement and quantification. Ethical evaluation and empirical explanation involve two different kinds of propositions that, for the sake of clarity, should be kept analytically distinct. Research ought to be systematic.56 Behavioral political science assumes and advocates the search for fundamental units of analysis that can provide a common base for the investigation of human behavior by all social scientists. Some political scientists, for instance, suggest that groups are an important unit on which to focus, while others are more interested in decision making and decisions.57 Whatever the case, the hope was that units of analysis would be found and examined in much the same way that physicists and chemists focus on atoms, molecules, and the like.

Reaction to Empiricism From the ver y beginning of the empirical movement, critics appeared. They pointed to the trivial nature of some of the supposedly scientific findings and applications. Common sense would have told us the same thing, they argued. But, as we explained earlier, there is a difference between intuition and scientific knowledge. To build a solid base for further research and accumulation of scientific knowledge in politics, commonsense knowledge must be verified empirically and, as is frequently the case, discarded when wrong. Some political scientists were also concerned about the prominence of nonpolitical factors in explanations of political behavior. Psychological explanations


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of political behavior stress the effect of personality on political behavior, whereas economic explanations attempt to show how costs and benefits affect people’s actions. These competing approaches to understanding political behavior sometimes disturbed those used to studying political institutions or political philosophies. To them it looked as though politics was being taken out of the study of politics. A more serious criticism of the scientific study of politics is that it leads to a failure to focus enough scholarly research attention on important social issues and problems. Some critics contend that, in the effort to be scientific and precise, political science overlooks the moral and policy issues that make the discipline relevant to the real world. The implications of research findings for important public policy choices or political reform are rarely addressed. In other words, the quest for scientific knowledge of politics has led to a focus on topics that are quantifiable and relatively easy to verify empirically but that are not related to significant, practical, and relevant societal concerns.58 These worries led to, among other things, the emergence of new or revisionist approaches to political science. Even as early as the late 1960s the president of the American Political Science Association, David Easton, offered a critique of behavioral or empirical political research. He argued, among other things, that to be more relevant to current issues, political scientists acting as scientists should consider these points:59 ■ Substance should determine technique. For example, the widespread

availability of quantitative techniques such as market research tools should not govern the choice of research topics. As the interpretationists maintain, sometimes it is as important to understand attitudes as to measure them. ■ The scientific study of politics may conceal a “conser vative” bias be-

cause it studies institutions and practices as they are, not as they should be or would be under different circumstances. Scientists, as noted earlier, strive to be value free. But is this a proper stance for someone studying despotism or revolution or poverty? Isn’t it appropriate to suggest alternatives to the status quo based on values? ■ Research must not “lose touch with reality.” Anyone who skims articles

in The Journal of American Political Science might wonder if they concern current government and politics or are a form of higher mathematics. One of the commonest complaints about behavioral research is that it has little relevance to “practical politics,” and many obser vers lament the failure of government or society to benefit from the knowledge and perspectives of political science.60

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■ Even natural scientists have an obligation to think about and improve

their communities and nations, especially in times of crises or turmoil. After all, to say, “I’m only concerned with facts,” may be to turn a blind eye to injustice.

Political Science Today: Peaceful Coexistence? During the growth of empirical political science and the reaction it produced, political science became extremely self-conscious about its methods and methodology. Innumerable journal articles and books debated the relative merits of attempting to study politics scientifically. Many of the debates became acrimonious, with the participants charging each other with misunderstanding and misstating each other’s positions. Departments at many colleges and universities became bitterly divided between “behavioralists” and “anti-behavioralists.” Being associated with one camp or the other could jeopardize someone’s job or chances for tenure, and many scholars charged that the major journals in the field—the most important venues for getting published and advancing careers—were being “taken over” by methodological purists. (If you wanted to publish an article on Plato’s philosophy of justice, you might be out of luck finding a leading journal that would publish a paper without an empirical, preferably quantitative, slant.) Indeed, this level of discord would surprise those students who believe that scholarship is a calm, dispassionate activity. Fortunately, although deep differences remain, the field of political science entered a period of truce beginning in the early 1980s. (What is more, the fights are not as public or bitter.) We might, then, think of the current era as eclectic, meaning that although the discipline continues to be divided by empiricism versus interpretative and constructionist schools, the sides seem to live in relative harmony. On one hand, the empirical or behavioral approach dominates certain subfields such as the study of electoral behavior, public opinion, decision making, policy, and political economy. The research coming from this side has become increasingly technical, especially in its use of mathematics, statistics, and deductive logic; hence, the need for courses and texts in research methods. On the other hand, the hostile reaction to the emergence and domination of the empirical perspective has brought about renewed interest in normative philosophical questions of “what ought to be” rather than “what is.” 61 Beyond this stance, part of the discipline has become receptive to variations of critical theor y, or the belief that a proper goal of social science is to critique and change society as a whole rather than merely understand or explain it. They feel, in other words, that by simply analyzing a polity as it is amounts to a tacit endorsement of its institutions and the distribution of power. Many critical


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theorists argue that proposing and working for reforms are legitimate activities for the social sciences. They therefore analyze institutions, practices, ideologies, and beliefs not only for their surface characteristics but also for their “hidden meanings” and implications for behavior. Take, for example, the statement “I’m just not interested in politics.” 62 An empirical political scientist might take this simply as a cut-and-dried case of apathy. He or she might then look for variables (for example, age, gender, ethnicity) associated with “not interested” responses on questionnaires. Its meaning is simply taken for granted. A critical theorist, by contrast, might ask, “Does this person really have no interest in current events? After all, isn’t everyone affected by most political outcomes like decisions about taxes, war and peace, and the environment and thus in fact have an interest in politics? So, perhaps we have a case of, say, ‘false consciousness,’ and it is crucial to uncover the reasons for lack of awareness of one’s ‘real’ stake in politics. Is the indifference a matter of choice, or does it stem from the (adverse) effects of the educational system, the mass media, modern campaigning, or some other source?” Here is another case in point. An important challenge to research in political science (as well as in other social science disciplines such as sociology) has come from feminist scholars. Among the criticisms raised is that “the nature of political action and the scope of political research have been defined in ways that, in particular, exclude women as women from politics” (emphasis added).63 Accordingly, “What a feminist political science must do is develop a new vocabular y of politics so that it can express the specific and different ways in which women have wielded power, been in authority, practiced citizenship, and understood freedom.” 64 Even short of arguing that political science concepts and theories have been developed from a male-only perspective, it is all too easy to point to examples of gender bias in political science research. Examples of such bias include failing to focus on policy issues of importance to women, assuming that findings apply to ever yone when the population studied was predominantly male, and using biased wording in sur vey questions.65 A related complaint is that political science in the past ignored the needs, interests, and views of the poor, the lower class, and the powerless and ser ved mainly to reinforce the belief that existing institutions were as good as they could be. Concerns about the proper scope and direction of political science have not abated, although nearly all researchers and teachers accept the need to balance the scientific approach with consideration of practical problems and moral issues.66 In sum, the widespread acceptance of empiricism has certainly not silenced critical reflection on political science as a discipline.67 Nor has it prevented the acceptance of alternative methodologies such as interpretation and constructionism. For the most part, however, both empiricists and nonempiricists live with each other peacefully.

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Conclusion In this chapter we described the characteristics of scientific knowledge and the scientific method. We presented reasons why political scientists are attempting to become more scientific in their research and discussed some of the difficulties associated with empirical political science. We also touched on questions about the value of the scientific approach to the study of politics. Despite these difficulties and uncertainties, the empirical approach is widely embraced, and students of politics need to be familiar with it. In Chapter 3 we begin to examine how to develop a strategy for investigating a general topic or question about some political phenomenon scientifically.

Notes 1. Boston Globe, “Not Fit for the Court,” January 14, 2006. Retrieved January 5, 2007, from www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/01/14/not_fit_for _the_court/. 2. Washington Post, “Confirm Judge Alito,” January 15, 2006, B06. 3. Jeffrey A. Segal and Albert D. Cover, “Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices,” American Political Science Review 83 (June 1989): 557–565. 4. We hasten to add that there is not one, definitive definition or interpretation of science and the scientific method. Philosophers, scientists, and social scientists have argued long and hard about core ideas and propositions. Our listing of the characteristics of scientific knowledge, however, includes widely accepted attributes, even if other writers describe them in different terms. 5. Whether or not political science or any social science can find causal laws is very much a contentious issue in philosophy. See, for instance, Alexander Rosenberg, Sociobiology and the Preemption of Social Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). 6. Alan C. Isaak, Scope and Methods of Political Science, 4th ed. (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1985), 106. 7. Ibid., 107. 8. The most ardent proponent of the idea that science really amounts to an effort to falsify (not prove) hypotheses and theories is Karl Popper. See for example, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1959). 9. Isaak, Scope and Methods, 66; see also 67. 10. Ibid., 297. 11. Remembering that scientific explanations are tentative can help clarify certain current controversies. You hear, for example, the claim that Darwinian evolution is not a fact but merely a theory. This statement is correct on both accounts. Nevertheless, the ideas and predictions of evolutionary theory have been repeatedly tested and confirmed by scientific methods and standards. So nearly every scientist accepts it as the more or less valid account of, say, human ancestry. But they will gladly abandon Darwinism if and when a better scientific explanation comes along. 12. Isaak, Scope and Methods, 30. 13. Ibid., 31. 14. The studies are reported in H. J. Eysenck and D. K. B. Nias, Sex, Violence, and the Media (London: Temple Smith, 1978), 103–104. 15. It may be tempting to think that historians are interested in describing and explaining only unique, one-time events, such as the outbreak of a particular war. This is not the case, however. Many historians search for generalizations that account for several specific events. Some even claim to have discovered the “laws of history.”


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16. Isaak, Scope and Methods, 103. 17. These are the interpretationists mentioned earlier. See, for example, R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946). For a good introduction to the distinction between understanding behavior and explaining it, see Martin Hollis, The Philosophy of Social Science: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chap. 7. 18. Ibid., 167, 169. 19. Many varieties of this theory exist, but they share the components presented here. 20. Anthony Downs, an economist, provided one of the first explications of the theory in An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957). His ideas in turn flowed from earlier economic analysis. See, for example, Harold Hotelling, “Stability in Competition,” Economic Journal 39 (March 1929): 41–57. 21. See James Enelow and Melvin Hinch, The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 22. Kenneth Shepsle, “The Strategy of Ambiguity: Uncertainty and Electoral Competition,” American Political Science Review 66 (June 1972): 555–568. 23. As an example, see Anders Westholm, “Distance Versus Direction: The Illusory Defeat of the Proximity Theory of Electoral Choice,” American Political Science Review 91 (December 1997): 870. 24. Here is an example: “Please look at . . . the booklet. Some people believe that we should spend much less money for defense. Suppose these people are at one end of a scale, at point 1. Others feel that defense spending should be greatly increased. Suppose these people are at the other end, at point 7. And, of course, some other people have opinions somewhere in between, at points 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6.” American National Election Study (ANES) 2004 Codebook. Available at Survey Documentation and Analysis, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved March 12, 2007, from http://sda.berkeley.edu/D3/NES2004public/Doc/nes0.htm. 25. The conceptualization of distance and other matters related to the proximity theory are debated in Westholm, “Distance Versus Direction,” 865–873 and Stuart Elaine MacDonald, George Rabinowitz, and Olga Listhaug, “On Attempting to Rehabilitate the Proximity Model: Sometimes the Patient Just Can’t Be Helped,” Journal of Politics (August 1998): 653–690. 26. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 27. Ibid. 28. The discussion of voter turnout presented in Chapter 1 provides a clear and important example. 29. A good example is Theda Skocpol States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 30. See Raymond E. Wolfinger and Steven J. Rosenstone, Who Votes? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). 31. An excellent example of the latter is Jared Diamond’s study of the demise of the Mayan, Anasazi, and other societies. See his Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2005), especially part 2; and Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 1999). 32. Isaak, Scope and Methods, 167. 33. Bruce A. Williams and Albert R. Matheny, “Testing Theories of Social Regulation: Hazardous Waste Regulation in the American States,” Journal of Politics 46 (May 1984): 428–458. 34. An often remarked on characteristic of scholarly journals is that they tend to report mostly positive findings. An article that shows “X is related to Y” may be more likely to be accepted for publication than one that asserts “X is not related to Y.” Whether or not this practice makes sense depends on the theoretical significance of the findings. If the X-Y relationship is trivial, it probably does not matter much if it is confirmed or disconfirmed. 35. Merrilee H. Salmon, Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, 2d. ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), 88–97. 36. Ibid., 80–85. 37. Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 57.

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38. Ibid., 54. 39. Ibid., 51. 40. The wallet-dropping episode is described in Stephen Holloway and Harvey A. Hornstein, “How Good News Makes Us Good,” Psychology Today, December 1976, 76–78. The results of the subsequent experiments are discussed in Stephen Holloway, Lyle Tucker, and Harvey A. Hornstein, “The Effects of Social and Nonsocial Information on Interpersonal Behavior of Males: The News Makes News,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35 (July 1977): 514–522; and in Harvey A. Hornstein, Elizabeth Lakind, Gladys Frankel, and Stella Manne, “Effects of Knowledge about Remote Social Events on Prosocial Behavior, Social Conception, and Mood,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32 (December 1975): 1038–1046. 41. See Alexander Rosenberg, The Philosophy of Social Science, 2d ed. (Boulder: Westview, 1998). 42. In fact, there are myriad concerns about the epistemological status of political science, but to simplify matters we use these two broad categories. 43. For further discussion of complete and partial explanations, see Isaak, Scope and Methods, 143. 44. See Charles A. McCoy and John Playford, eds., Apolitical Politics: A Critique of Behavioralism (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967). 45. The term constructionism encompasses an enormous variety of philosophical perspectives, the description of which goes far beyond the purposes of this book. The seminal work that brought the ideas into sociology and from there into political science is Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Doubleday, 1966). An excellent but challenging analysis of constructionism is Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). Equally important, members of this school have widely varying opinions about the place of empiricism in social research. Many constructivists feel their position is perfectly consistent with the scientific study of politics; others do not. 46. See John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995). 47. Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46 (Spring 1992): 391–425. 48. For an excellent collection of articles about the pros and cons of studying human behavior scientifically, see Michael Martin and Lee C. Anderson, eds., Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996). 49. Steven B. Smith, “Political Science and Political Philosophy: An Uneasy Relationship,” PS: Political Science and Politics 33 (June 2000): 189. 50. Isaak, Scope and Methods, 34–38. 51. Ibid., 38–39. For a history of the development of survey research, see also Earl F. Babbie, Survey Research Methods (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1973), 42–45. 52. For early American sources of behavioralism, see Charles E. Merriam, New Aspects of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924). 53. See, for example, the excellent collection of articles entitled “Science and the Cold War: A Roundtable,” in Diplomatic History 24 (Winter 2000). The essay by Jefferson P. Marquis, “Social Science and Nation Building in Vietnam,” 79–105, is especially relevant. 54. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice (New York: Duell, Sloane and Pearce, 1944). 55. It is interesting to note that survey research (polling) is used to study attitudes and behavior in many authoritarian and unstable nations. 56. David B. Easton, “The Current Meaning of ‘Behavioralism’,” in James C. Charlesworth, ed., Contemporary Political Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1967), 16–17. 57. David B. Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951); and Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961). 58. See McCoy and Playford, Apolitical Politics. 59. David Easton, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review 63 (December 1969): 1051.


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60. See Richard P. Nathan, Social Science in Government: Uses and Misuses (New York: Basic Books, 1988). 61. Isaak, Scope and Methods, 45. 62. This example is based on an article by Issac Balbus, “The Concept of Interest in Pluralist and Marxian Analysis,” Politics & Society (February 1971): 151–177. 63. Kathleen B. Jones and Anna G. Jonasdottir, “Introduction: Gender as an Analytic Category in Political Science,” in Kathleen B. Jones and Anna G. Jonasdottir, eds., The Political Interests of Gender (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1988), 2. 64. Kathleen B. Jones, “Towards the Revision of Politics,” in Jones and Jonasdottir, The Political Interests of Gender, 25. 65. Margrit Eichler, Nonsexist Research Methods: A Practical Guide (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987). 66. See the symposium “Special to PS: Political Science and Political Philosophy” in PS: Political Science and Politics 33 (June 2000): 189–197. 67. For example, see David M. Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).

Terms Introduced A CTIONS . Physical human movement or behavior done for a reason. C ONSTRUCTIONISM . An approach to knowledge that asserts humans actually construct—through their social interactions and cultural and historical practices—many of the facts they take for granted as having an independent, objective, or material reality. C RITICAL THEORY . The philosophical stance that disciplines such as political science should assess critically and change society, not merely study it objectively. C UMULATIVE . Characteristic of scientific knowledge; new substantive findings and research techniques are built upon those of previous studies. D EDUCTION . A process of reasoning from a theor y to specific obser vations. E MPIRICAL GENERALIZATION . A statement that summarizes the relationship between individual facts and that communicates general knowledge. E MPIRICAL VERIFICATION . Characteristic of scientific knowledge; demonstration by means of objective obser vation that a statement is true. E XPLANATORY . Characteristic of scientific knowledge; signifying that a conclusion can be derived from a set of general propositions and specific initial considerations; providing a systematic, empirically verified understanding of why a phenomenon occurs as it does. F ALSIFIABILITY . A property of a statement or hypothesis such that it can (in principle, at least) be rejected in the face of contravening evidence. G ENERAL . Characteristic of scientific knowledge; applicable to many rather than to a few cases. I NDUCTION . Induction is the process of drawing an inference from a set of premises and obser vations. The premises of an inductive argument support its conclusion but do not prove it.

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I NTERPRETATION . Philosophical approach to the study of human behavior that claims that one must understand the way individuals see their world in order to understand truly their behavior or actions; philosophical objection to the empirical approach to political science. N ONNORMATIVE KNOWLEDGE . Knowledge concerned not with evaluation or prescription but with factual or objective determinations. N ORMATIVE KNOWLEDGE . Knowledge that is evaluative, value laden, and concerned with prescribing what ought to be. PARSIMONY.The principle that among explanations or theories with equal degrees of confirmation, the simplest—the one based on the fewest assumptions and explanator y factors—is to be preferred. (Sometimes known as Ockham’s razor.) P ROBABILISTIC EXPLANATION . An explanation that does not explain or predict events with 100 percent accuracy. T HEORY . A statement or series of statements that organize, explain, and predict phenomena. T RANSMISSIBLE . Characteristic of scientific knowledge; indicates that the methods used in making scientific discoveries are made explicit.

Suggested Readings Eichler, Margrit. Nonsexist Research Methods: A Practical Guide. Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987. Elster, Jon. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Heil, John. Philosophy of the Mind: A Contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge, 1998. Isaak, Alan C. Scope and Methods of Political Science, 4th ed. Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1985. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. Martin, Michael, and Lee C. McIntyre, eds. Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994. McCoy, Charles A., and John Playford, eds. Apolitical Politics: A Critique of Behavioralism. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967. Nielsen, Joyce McCarl, ed. Feminist Research Methods: Exemplary Readings in the Social Sciences. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990. Rosenberg, Alexander. The Philosophy of Social Science, 2d ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1998.


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CHAPTER

2

LYNDON JOHNSON'S MESSAGE TO CONGRESS ON THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT BY RANDALL E. ADKINS

Excerpted from Randall E. Adkins, THE EVOLUTION OF POLITICAL PARTIES, CAMPAIGNS, AND ELECTIONS: LANDMARK DOCUMENTS, 1787-2007 (Washington: DC, CQ Press, 2008), pp. 251-265.



39 $ Lyndon Johnson’s Message to Congress on the Voting Rights Act* !

(1965) 1. How was President Johnson successful in getting Congress to pass meaningful voting rights legislation when previous efforts had failed? 2. How has the growing number of black and Latino voters affected the electoral and political agendas of the Democratic and Republican Parties?

P

rior to the Civil War the qualifications for voting imposed by the different states were not considered matters of federal law. Many states imposed various methods to ensure that only specific members of the population could vote, mostly prosperous white men. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, superseded state laws that prohibited blacks from voting and granted blacks the franchise. Resistance to the enfranchisement of blacks was vigorous in the former slave-holding states, but the Enforcement Act of 1870 and the Force Act of 1871 allowed for oversight of state elections in the South by the federal government. The result of these actions was that blacks registered to vote and elected people to federal, state, and local political offices. Not long after, however, the Compromise of 1877 allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to take the presidency but brought an end to the reforms of Reconstruction. Union troops pulled out, oversight ended, and efforts began to disenfranchise the vote of blacks through gerrymandering of electoral districts, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other methods. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which stated that “separate but equal” was constitutional, further hindered the voting rights of blacks. Proponents of the enfranchisement of black voters adopted a dual strategy of amending public policy through litigation and lobbying. Slowly, *Lyndon B. Johnson. Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise. March 15, 1965, John Wooley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project (online) (Santa Barbara: University of California [hosted], Gerhard Peters [database]). Available at www.presidency. ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=26805.

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Lyndon Johnson’s Message to Congress

but surely, their efforts bore fruit. The Supreme Court found in Guinn v. United States (1915) that “grandfather clauses,” or provisions requiring that voter registration depend on whether the applicant descended from someone enfranchised before 1867, violated the Fifteenth Amendment. Later, the Court found in Smith v. Allwright (1944) that a “white primary” in Texas also violated the amendment. Such a primary prohibited the participation of voters in the state who were not white from voting in the Democratic primary, effectively blocking those voters from voting since the Democratic Party controlled most political offices in the South. Unfortunately, the strategy of case-by-case litigation failed to prompt voluntary compliance in states and communities that were not sued. Lobbying legislators from the South also achieved few results because most federal and state legislators were white and had little vested interest in changing the status quo. By the late 1950s and the early 1960s, however, Congress had passed three pieces of legislation with provisions that made it more difficult for states to keep blacks from registering to vote. Despite these efforts, registration rates of black voters remained negligible in the Deep South and well below the registration rates of whites in the remainder of the South. The tide began to turn with passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, widely considered the most important piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress. In it Congress intervened in matters previously left to the states, providing statutory guarantees that Congress would fulfill the spirit of the Fifteenth Amendment. The measure passed because of President Lyndon Johnson’s leadership in the wake of the assassination of President John Kennedy and compelling evidence of continued interference with attempts by blacks to vote in the South. President Johnson introduced the bill to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, and was able to sign it a few months later on August 6, 1965. The legislation was opposed by Southern senators, but it passed with substantial support from both parties due to the bipartisan support of individuals like Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, R-Ill. A year later, the Supreme Court upheld the act’s constitutionality in South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 327–328 (1966) after the state challenged the pre-clearance provision. Congress has since passed and the president has extended various provisions of the act in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006.



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At the time that the Voting Rights Act was passed, blacks were virtually excluded from public office in the South. Approximately twothirds of white voters were registered to vote compared to one-third of eligible black voters. Today, black and Latino voter registration rates are closing the gap on whites in relation to the percentage of each group in the overall population, and enforcement of the Voting Rights Act has increased the opportunity for black and Latino voters to elect black and Latino representatives.

[As delivered in person before a joint session at 9:02 p.m.] Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress: I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause. At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed. There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great Government—the Government of the greatest Nation on earth. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation.


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The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans—not as Democrats or Republicans—we are met here as Americans to solve that problem. This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: “All men are created equal”—“government by consent of the governed”—“give me liberty or give me death.” Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives. Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man’s possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being. To apply any other test—to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race, his religion or the place of his birth—is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom.

The Right to Vote Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish, it must be rooted in democracy. The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country, in large measure, is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.



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Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists, and if he manages to present himself to the registrar, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on the application. And if he manages to fill out an application he is given a test. The registrar is the sole judge of whether he passes this test. He may be asked to recite the entire Constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of State law. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin. Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books—and I have helped to put three of them there—can ensure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it. In such a case our duty must be clear to all of us. The Constitution says that no person shall be kept from voting because of his race or his color. We have all sworn an oath before God to support and to defend that Constitution. We must now act in obedience to that oath.

Guaranteeing the Right to Vote Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote. The broad principles of that bill will be in the hands of the Democratic and Republican leaders tomorrow. After they have reviewed it, it will come here formally as a bill. I am grateful for this opportunity to come here tonight at the invitation of the leadership to reason with my friends, to give them my views, and to visit with my former colleagues. I have had prepared a more comprehensive analysis of the legislation which I had intended to transmit to the clerk tomorrow but which I will submit to the clerks tonight. But I want to really discuss with you now briefly the main proposals of this legislation, This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections—Federal, State, and local—which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote. This bill will establish a simple, uniform standard which cannot be used, however ingenious the effort, to flout our Constitution. It will provide for citizens to be registered by officials of the United States Government if the State officials refuse to register them.


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It will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits which delay the right to vote. Finally, this legislation will ensure that properly registered individuals are not prohibited from voting. I will welcome the suggestions from all of the Members of Congress—I have no doubt that I will get some—on ways and means to strengthen this law and to make it effective. But experience has plainly shown that this is the only path to carry out the command of the Constitution. To those who seek to avoid action by their National Government in their own communities; who want to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections, the answer is simple: Open your polling places to all your people. Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin. Extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land.

The Need for Action There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States [r]ights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer. The last time a President sent a civil rights bill to the Congress it contained a provision to protect voting rights in Federal elections. That civil rights bill was passed after 8 long months of debate. And when that bill came to my desk from the Congress for my signature, the heart of the voting provision had been eliminated. This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, no hesitation and no compromise with our purpose. We cannot, we must not, refuse to protect the right of every American to vote in every election that he may desire to participate in. And we ought not and we cannot and we must not wait another 8 months before we get a bill. We have already waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone. So I ask you to join me in working long hours—nights and weekends, if necessary—to pass this bill. And I don’t make that request lightly. For from the window where I sit with the problems of our country I recognize that outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations, and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.



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We Shall Overcome But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome. As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed, more than a hundred years, since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham Lincoln, a great President of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact. A century has passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come. I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come. And when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American. For Negroes are not the only victims. How many white children have gone uneducated, how many white families have lived in stark poverty, how many white lives have been scarred by fear, because we have wasted our energy and our substance to maintain the barriers of hatred and terror? So I say to all of you here, and to all in the Nation tonight, that those who appeal to you to hold on to the past do so at the cost of denying you your future. This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all: black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller. These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease and ignorance, we shall over, come.

An American Problem Now let none of us in any sections look with prideful righteousness on the troubles in another section, or on the problems of our neighbors. There is really no part of America where the promise of equality has been fully kept. In Buffalo as


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well as in Birmingham, in Philadelphia as well as in Selma, Americans are struggling for the fruits of freedom. This is one Nation. What happens in Selma or in Cincinnati is a matter of legitimate concern to every American. But let each of us look within our own hearts and our own communities, and let each of us put our shoulder to the wheel to root out injustice wherever it exists. As we meet here in this peaceful, historic chamber tonight, men from the South, some of whom were at Iwo Jima, men from the North who have carried Old Glory to far corners of the world and brought it back without a stain on it, men from the East and from the West, are all fighting together without regard to religion, or color, or region, in Viet-Nam. Men from every region fought for us across the world 20 years ago. And in these common dangers and these common sacrifices the South made its contribution of honor and gallantry no less than any other region of the great Republic—and in some instances, a great many of them, more. And I have not the slightest doubt that good men from everywhere in this country, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Golden Gate to the harbors along the Atlantic, will rally together now in this cause to vindicate the freedom of all Americans. For all of us owe this duty; and I believe that all of us will respond to it. Your President makes that request of every American.

Progress through the Democratic Process The real hero of this struggle is the American Negro. His actions and protests, his courage to risk safety and even to risk his life, have awakened the conscience of this Nation. His demonstrations have been designed to call attention to injustice, designed to provoke change, designed to stir reform. He has called upon us to make good the promise of America. And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not for his persistent bravery, and his faith in American democracy. For at the real heart of battle for equality is a deep-seated belief in the democratic process. Equality depends not on the force of arms or tear gas but upon the force of moral right; not on recourse to violence but on respect for law and order. There have been many pressures upon your President and there will be others as the days come and go. But I pledge you tonight that we intend to fight this battle where it should be fought: in the courts, and in the Congress, and in the hearts of men. We must preserve the right of free speech and the right of free assembly. But the right of free speech does not carry with it, as has been said, the right to



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hol[l]er fire in a crowded theater. We must preserve the right to free assembly, but free assembly does not carry with it the right to block public thoroughfares to traffic. We do have a right to protest, and a right to march under conditions that do not infringe the constitutional rights of our neighbors. And I intend to protect all those rights as long as I am permitted to serve in this office. We will guard against violence, knowing it strikes from our hands the very weapons which we seek—progress, obedience to law, and belief in American values. In Selma as elsewhere we seek and pray for peace. We seek order. We seek unity. But we will not accept the peace of stifled rights, or the order imposed by fear, or the unity that stifles protest. For peace cannot be purchased at the cost of liberty. In Selma tonight, as in every—and we had a good day there—as in every city, we are working for just and peaceful settlement. We must all remember that after this speech I am making tonight, after the police and the FBI and the Marshals have all gone, and after you have promptly passed this bill, the people of Selma and the other cities of the Nation must still live and work together. And when the attention of the Nation has gone elsewhere they must try to heal the wounds and to build a new community. This cannot be easily done on a battleground of violence, as the history of the South itself shows. It is in recognition of this that men of both races have shown such an outstandingly impressive responsibility in recent days—last Tuesday, again today,

Rights Must Be Opportunities The bill that I am presenting to you will be known as a civil rights bill. But, in a larger sense, most of the program I am recommending is a civil rights program. Its object is to open the city of hope to all people of all races. Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right. All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race. But I would like to caution you and remind you that to exercise these privileges takes much more than just legal right. It requires a trained mind and a healthy body. It requires a decent home, and the chance to find a job, and the opportunity to escape from the clutches of poverty. Of course, people cannot contribute to the Nation if they are never taught to read or write, if their bodies are stunted from hunger, if their sickness goes untended, if their life is spent in hopeless poverty just drawing a welfare check.


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So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we are also going to give all our people, black and white, the help that they need to walk through those gates.

The Purpose of This Government My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Tex., in a small MexicanAmerican school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn’t speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes. I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead. Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child. I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country. But now I do have that chance—and I’ll let you in on a secret—I mean to use it. And I hope that you will use it with me. This is the richest and most powerful country which ever occupied the globe. The might of past empires is little compared to ours. But I do not want to be the President who built empires, or sought grandeur, or extended dominion. I want to be the President who educated young children to the wonders of their world. I want to be the President who helped to feed the hungry and to prepare them to be taxpayers instead of taxeaters. I want to be the President who helped the poor to find their own way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election. I want to be the President who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races and all regions and all parties. I want to be the President who helped to end war among the brothers of this earth. And so at the request of your beloved Speaker and the Senator from Montana; the majority leader, the Senator from Illinois; the minority leader, Mr. McCulloch, and other Members of both parties, I came here tonight—not as



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President Roosevelt came down one time in person to veto a bonus bill, not as President Truman came down one time to urge the passage of a railroad bill— but I came down here to ask you to share this task with me and to share it with the people that we both work for. I want this to be the Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, which did all these things for all these people. Beyond this great chamber, out yonder in 50 States, are the people that we serve. Who can tell what deep and unspoken hopes are in their hearts tonight as they sit there and listen. We all can guess, from our own lives, how difficult they often find their own pursuit of happiness, how many problems each little family has. They look most of all to themselves for their futures. But I think that they also look to each of us. Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says—in Latin—“God has favored our undertaking.” God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight.

Alabama Literacy Test At the time the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, the state of Alabama required all applicants to vote to fill out a lengthy application (reprinted on pages 262–265) and then pass a test to determine whether the individual was literate or not. Applicants were asked to choose randomly from a hundred different versions of the test in order to make it more difficult to study for the exam. The test itself was composed of three parts. The first part of the exam required applicants to read aloud, write an excerpt from the U.S. Constitution as it was dictated by the registrar, or both. Second, applicants were required to answer four questions based on the excerpt they had just written. For example, one version of the test asked applicants, “What officer is designated by the Constitution to be President of the Senate of the United States?” (The answer is the vice president.) Finally, applicants were asked to answer four questions about state or national government. For example, the same version of the test asked applicants to name “The only legal tender which may be authorized by states for payment of debts. . . .” (The answer is U.S. currency.) Applications were reviewed later by a threeperson board of registrars, which permitted subjective assessment of what was already a very difficult test.


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CHAPTER

3

THE "LITERARY DIGEST" POLL BY RANDALL E. ADKINS




32 $ The Literary Digest Poll* !

(1936) 1. Why did the Literary Digest successfully predict the outcome of presidential elections from 1916 through 1932, but miss the winner of the 1936 election? 2. How is polling used in presidential elections today?

T

he 1936 presidential election inspired new methods of public opinion polling. That year Literary Digest, a popular magazine founded in 1890, conducted a poll to ascertain the outcome of the election. Similar polls conducted by the periodical had correctly predicted the winners of the 1916, 1920, 1924, 1928, and 1932 elections, a profitable endeavor in that these successful predictions generated free news coverage and sold subscriptions. After more than two million postcards of the ten million distributed were returned, the magazine announced just days before the presidential election that Alf Landon, the governor of Kansas, would defeat incumbent President Franklin Roosevelt by winning 57 percent of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes. Despite this declaration, Roosevelt garnered 60.8 percent of the popular vote—a landslide that at the time was the greatest margin of victory in the history of U.S. presidential elections. Roosevelt carried every state except Maine and Vermont, and the Democrats increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate. Despite its previous successes, the Literary Digest’s poll ultimately failed because the polling techniques it employed were unreliable. The magazine did survey an incredibly large sample, but that sample was not representative of the nation’s views as a whole. This happened because the magazine first surveyed its own readers and then added to that number the owners of registered automobiles and telephone subscribers. While this strategy had worked in previous election cycles, it *Literary Digest, October 31, 1936. Reprinted at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168.

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The Literary Digest Poll

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did not create a valid sample during the depths of the Great Depression. During that time most individuals were underemployed or unemployed and barely had (or didn’t have) money enough for essentials, much less such luxuries as magazines, cars, and phones. The result was an overrepresentation of individuals who had disposable incomes higher than the national average, and individuals in that economic bracket were inclined to vote for Republicans; hence, Landon’s “victory” in the poll. Whatever the reason, the incorrect prediction of the 1936 election discredited the Literary Digest in the eyes of the American public, and by 1938 it had merged with Time magazine. Despite the outcome of this particular poll, however, public opinion polling remained an important part of campaigns and elections: George H. Gallup achieved national recognition by correctly predicting Roosevelt would win over Landon with a poll based on a random sample of just five thousand people. Gallup’s correct prediction introduced new methodologies to survey research upon which politicians and pundits still rely today.

Landon, 1,293,669; Roosevelt, 972,897 Final Returns in the Digest’s Poll of Ten Million Voters Well, the great battle of the ballots in the poll of 10 million voters, scattered throughout the forty-eight states of the Union, is now finished, and in the table below we record the figures received up to the hour of going to press. These figures are exactly as received from more than one in every five voters polled in our country—they are neither weighted, adjusted, nor interpreted. Never before in an experience covering more than a quarter of a century in taking polls have we received so many different varieties of criticism—praise from many and condemnation from many others—and yet it has been just of the same type that has come to us every time a Poll has been taken in all these years. A telegram from a newspaper in California asks: “Is it true that Mr. Hearst has purchased The Literary Digest?” A telephone message only the day before these lines were written: “Has the Republican National Committee purchased The Literary Digest?” And all types and varieties, including: “Have the Jews purchased The Literary Digest?” “Is the Pope of Rome a stockholder of The Literary Digest?” And so it goes—all equally absurd and amusing. We


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could add more to this list, and yet all of these questions in recent days are but repetitions of what we have been experiencing all own the years from the very first Poll. Problem—Now, are the figures in this poll correct? In answer to this question we will simply refer to a telegram we sent to a young man in Massachusetts the other day answer to his challenge to us to wager 100,000 on the accuracy of our Poll. We wired him as follows: For nearly a quarter century, we have been taking Polls of the voters in the forty-eight States, and especially in Presidential years, and we have always merely mailed the ballots, counted and recorded those returned and let the people of the Nation draw their conclusions as to our accuracy. So far, we have been right in every Poll. Will we be right in the current Poll? That, as Mrs. Roosevelt said concerning the President’s reelection, is in the “lap of the gods.” We never make any claims before election but we respectfully refer you to the opinion of one of the most quoted citizens today, the Hon. James A. Farley, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. This is what Mr. Farley said October 14, 1932: “Any sane person cannot escape the implication of such a gigantic sampling of popular opinion as is embraced in The Literary Digest straw vote. I consider this conclusive evidence as to the desire of the people of this country for a change in the National Government. The Literary Digest poll is an achievement of no little magnitude. It is a Poll fairly and correctly conducted.” In studying the table of the voters from of the States printed below, please remember that we make no claims at this time for their absolute accuracy. On a similar occasion we felt it important to say: In a wild year like this, however, many sagacious observers will refuse to bank upon appearances, however convincing. As for The Digest, it draws no conclusions from the results of its vast distribution of twenty million ballots. True to its historic non-partizan policy—or “omni-partizan,” as some editor described it in 1928—we supply our readers with the facts to the best of our ability, and leave them to draw their own conclusions. We make no claim to infallibility. We did not coin the phrase “uncanny accuracy” which has been so freely-applied to our Polls. We know only too well the limitations of every straw vote, however enormous the sample gathered, however scientific the method. It would be a miracle if every State of the fortyeight behaved on Election day exactly as forecast by the Poll. We say now about Rhode Island and Massachusetts that our figures indicate in our own judgment too large a percentage for Mr. Landon and too small a percentage for Mr. Roosevelt, and although in 1932 the figures in these two States indicated Mr. Hoover’s carrying both, we announced:



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“A study of the returns convinces us that in those States our ballots have somehow failed to come back in adequate quantity from large bodies of Democratic voters.” Our own opinion was that they would be found in the Roosevelt column, and they were. We will not do the same this year; we feel that both States will be found in the Landon column, and we are reaching this conclusion by the same process that lead [sic] to the reverse conclusion in 1932. Pennsylvania is another State which requires special mention. Four years ago, our figures gave the State to Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. Hoover carried it on Election day. In comparing our ballot this year with that of 1932, we find that in many cities in Pennsylvania our figures showed a much higher trend toward Mr. Roosevelt than was justified by the election figures on Election day in 1932. In examining the very same cities now we discover the reverse trend, and in cities that in 1932 indicated an approximately 60–40 percent relationship between Roosevelt and Hoover, we now find 60 percent for Landon and 40 percent for Roosevelt. That’s the plain language of it. Many people wonder at these great changes in a State like Pennsylvania, and we confess to wonderment ourselves. On the Pacific Coast, we find California, Oregon, and Washington all vote for Mr. Landon in our Poll, and yet we are told that the Pacific Coast is “aflame” for Mr. Roosevelt.

State

Ala. Ariz. Ark. Calif. Colo. Conn. Del. Fla. Ga. Idaho Ill. Ind. Iowa Kans. Ky. La. SOURCE:

Electoral Vote

11 3 9 22 6 8 3 7 12 4 29 14 11 9 11 10

Landon 1936 Total Vote For State

3,060 2,337 2,724 89,516 15,949 28,809 2,918 6,087 3,948 3,653 123,297 42,805 31,871 35,408 13,365 3,686

Roosevelt 1936 Total Vote For State

10,082 1,975 7,608 77,245 10,025 13,413 2,048 8,620 12,915 2,611 79,035 26,663 18,614 20,254 16,592 7,902

State

Nev. N.H. N.J. N.M. N.Y. N.C. N. Dak. Ohio Okla. Ore. Pa. R.I. S.C. S.Dak. Tenn.

Electoral Vote

3 4 16 3 47 13 4 26 11 5 36 4 8 4 11

Landon 1936 Total Vote For State

Roosevelt 1936 Total Vote For State

1,003 9,207 58,677 1,625 162,260 6,113 4,250 77,896 14,442 11,747 119,086 10,401 1,247 8,483 9,883

955 2,737 27,631 1,662 139,277 16,324 3,666 50,778 15,075 10,951 81,114 3,489 7,105 4,507 19,829

Literary Digest, October 31, 1936.


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A State like California is always a difficult State to get an accurate opinion from by the polling method, and we may be far astray, yet every one should remember that in the Gubernatorial campaign a few years ago, we took a Poll of California when it was believed by most of California citizens that Mr. Upton Sinclair would be elected Governor, and the result of our Poll showed that Mr. Sinclair would not be elected Governor and the Poll was correct. The State of Washington seems to be more favorable to Mr. Landon than either Oregon or California. We cannot in our Poll detect anything that would indicate a reason for this difference. Seattle—Right here we wish to say that in 1932 our Poll in Seattle gave Mr. Roosevelt 65.43 percent of the vote, and he carried that city by 61.58 percent of the vote. In the current Poll, 1936, Seattle gives Mr. Landon 58.52 percent and Mr. Roosevelt 40.46 percent. Our readers will notice we overestimated Mr. Roosevelt in 1932—are we overestimating Mr. Landon now? We see no reason for supposing so. And the three Pacific Coast States which now show for Mr. Landon and which millions believe will vote for Mr. Roosevelt (they may be right) in 1924, 1928, and 1932 were correctly forecast in The Literary Digest Polls. In the great Empire State, New York the figures for so large a State are what might be called very close. After looking at the figures for New York in the column at the left, remember that in 1932 we gave Mr. Roosevelt 46.1 percent and Mr. Hoover 43.9 percent, even closer than it is to day. And yet we correctly forecast that Mr. Roosevelt would carry the State. And so we might go on with many States that are very close, and some not so close, but in which local conditions have much to do with results, not in polls such as our Poll but on Election day. The Poll represents the most extensive straw ballot in the field—the most experienced in view of its twenty-five years of perfecting—the most unbiased in view of its prestige—a Poll that has always previously been correct. Even its critics admit its value as an index of popular sentiment. As one of these critics, the Nation, observes: “Because it indicates both the 1932 and 1936 vote, it offers the raw material for as careful a prognostication as it is possible to make at this time.”



CHAPTER

4

THE ULTIMATE SOURCE OF POLITICAL OPINIONS: GENES AND THE ENVIRONMENT BY JOHN R. ALFORD AND JOHN R. HIBBING

Excerpted from Barbara Norrander, Clyde Wilcox, UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC OPINION, 3RD EDITION (Washington: DC, CQ Press, 2010), pp. 43-56.



3 The Ultimate Source of Political Opinions: Genes and the Environment John R. Alford and John R. Hibbing

hy do you hold the opinion you do on abortion? On immigration? On taxes? On gay rights? On foreign aid? On privacy? No doubt you feel as though your opinions are produced by the politically relevant forces in your environment. Judging by the research of experts on public opinion, including that reported in the pages of this volume, your hunch is correct. Your opinion may have been shaped by active parental socialization, by an influential teacher, by a friend, by a college roommate, by the coming out of a gay friend, by an effective campaign advertisement, by the words of a trusted pastor, by the death of a classmate in combat, by a family economic catastrophe, or by the wording of the question employed to tap your opinion. However, the scholarly consensus is that experiences are the source of political opinion. Proceeding on the basis of this assumption, scholars of public opinion have done an amazing job of detailing the diverse ways in which environmental factors shape public opinion. Not only is there empirical evidence that environmental forces shape public opinion, but it is also a normatively pleasing conclusion. If public opinion were not responsive to important life events, it simply would not constitute a somewhat rational response to the surrounding world. Most people are proud of their political views and cling to them, often passionately, because those views make sense to them in light of their experiences. Were public opinion impervious to environmental forces, the rationality of politics would be diminished and the appropriateness of people’s views would be called into question. People might then refuse to change their opinions despite obvious evidence that their opinions were incorrect, political opponents might seem obstinate and inflexible, the same major event might be interpreted in fundamentally different ways by different groups of people, and distinct perceptions of the political world might lead to a political system that is often deadlocked even though cooperation is sorely needed. Come to think of it, this description seems to fit the political realities all too well. Maybe individual political opinions are not merely explainable responses to the environment. Maybe there is more to the sources of public opinion than scholars and laypeople typically assume or want to assume. Maybe people are not fully conscious of the reasons they hold

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the political views they do. Maybe the environment is only part of the story, and people have genetic predispositions toward certain politically relevant beliefs. In fact, research suggests that this is precisely the situation. For nearly a quarter of a century, behavior geneticists have presented systematic evidence that political opinions are shaped by both environmental forces and genetics (Martin et al. 1986; Eaves et al. 1999; Alford, Funk, and Hibbing 2005; Hatemi et al. 2007). Because of the assumptions on which traditional research is based, this shocking finding should have altered both the research agendas of public opinion scholars and the cherished assumptions of laypeople. But for whatever reason—perhaps because it would have required altering research agendas and rejecting cherished assumptions—this provocative finding was largely ignored. In this chapter, we consider the evidence for the surprising assertion that genes are relevant to political opinions, and we discuss the implications of such a conclusion for understanding the nature and sources of public opinion. But before we examine the empirical evidence, some background discussion of behavior genetics in general should help ground the later findings.

How Could Genes Physically Influence Political Attitudes? We begin by confronting directly two vastly different perceptions of the very nature of politics—two perceptions that should be considered by all citizens and especially by undergraduate students taking a course on public opinion. Were you born a political blank slate whose content later emerged entirely from environmental exposures? Or is there, down deep inside of you, a biological predisposition that would color (not determine) your political preferences regardless of your environment? This question is not just fodder for a superficial parlor game; rather, it has implications for understanding the foundations of political opinion and perhaps much more. One critic of our previous research on the possible role of genetics in the formation of political attitudes asserts that if there is a genetic basis for these attitudes, “it would require nothing less than a revision of our understanding of all of human history, much, if not most of political science, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, as well as, perhaps, our understanding of what it means to be human” (Charney 2008, 300). Hyperbole or not, there is no doubt that the view that both the environment and genes matter leads to conclusions that are fundamentally different from those of the simplistic “environmental-only” view of the formation of political attitudes. Our own belief is that the role of genes should not be ruled out merely because it would require a “revision” of traditional ways of thinking or because it suggests a view of the human condition that is less favorable than some people would prefer to entertain. Science does not move forward by being fearful of new hypotheses and new findings. It does not move forward by having as its primary concern the protection of human sensibilities. If it did, people

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Alford and Hibbing


would still believe the planet Earth to be the center of the solar system, the heart muscle to be the locus of emotional response, and homo sapiens to have been forever distinct from all other primates. Because of an unwillingness to revise their understanding, scholars are left knowing painfully little about the way in which genes might affect politics. Unlike research on the genetic bases of personality and social behavior, precious little research has been conducted on the connection of genes to politics. This situation is unfortunate, but it does mean that in preparation for empirical testing researchers are free to engage in informed speculation on the likely mechanisms linking genes and political attitudes. Genes are sequences of nucleotides buried deep in the nuclei of most of the body’s cells. How could these little chemical compounds influence whether you favor or oppose prayer in public school, whether you favor or oppose property taxes, or whether you favor or oppose nuclear power to produce energy? How could they be related to whether you tend to gravitate toward the liberal or the conservative end of the political spectrum when the very meanings of the terms liberal and conservative are different from one country to another and from one time period to another? Even suggesting connections between genes and particular political beliefs seems wildly far-fetched. And yet widely varied studies of both human and animal behaviors have been consistently surprising everyone in recent years with their evidence of genetic links to an ever-growing array of behaviors and orientations. Let us be clear: the claim being made is not that there is a gene for, say, attitudes toward immigration. Rather, it is claimed that suites of genes may influence biological systems that, in turn, shape attitudes toward bedrock principles of group life that, in turn, shape public opinion on issues of the day, depending on the ways in which those issues are framed and interpreted. This chain is presented in the following sequence: (1) Genes

(2) Relevant biological systems

(3) Preferences on bedrock issues facing any group

(4) Stances on issues of the day as framed in a particular culture at a particular time

Stances on specific political issues of the day may actually result from deep-seated orientations toward the core issues of group life—issues that confront any group at any time, such as those pertaining to out-group relations, in-group leadership, core group values, and reproductive norms. These baseline orientations interact with the way in which the issues of the day are framed in a certain sociopolitical context to yield actual specific positions on issues such as immigration. These orientations toward large-scale social life issues are much broader than those toward specific current issues and focus on domains such as leadership, punishment, human nature, and intragroup coexistence that are both timeless and ubiquitous in group life. If political temperament has a meaningful evolutionary basis, it is likely

The Ultimate Source of Political Opinions


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to flow through the broad preferences for group life tapped by something like these examples of dichotomous choices: Society works best when leaders are obeyed. – or– Society works best when leaders are questioned. Society works best when people compromise in order to get things done. – or– Society works best when people stick to their principles no matter what. Society works best when people live according to traditional values. – or– Society works best when people adjust their values to fit changing times. Society works best when people realize the world is dangerous. – or– Society works best when people assume all those in faraway places are kind.

Variations in these bedrock principles, in turn, are potentially affected by biological systems, particularly those involving the neurotransmitters that activate or fail to activate central nervous system responses to environmental stimuli. To take one example, long-standing work in medical psychology has revealed that the neurotransmitter vasopressin is associated with affiliative behavior and that certain genes affect the vasopressin system (see Hammock and Young 2005). People with different versions (alleles) of genes relevant to the vasopressin system behave differently in social situations. One study has found that people with a certain vasopressin allele are more likely to be generous to others than are those with a different vasopressin allele (Knafo et al. 2007). Is it completely beyond the pale to imagine that these variations in affiliative tendencies are also relevant to political preferences? Variations in other neurotransmitter systems have been found to be relevant to many personality traits, including assertiveness (serotonin— see Madsen 1986), depression (serotonin—see Caspi et al. 2003), risk taking (dopamine—see Ding et al. 2002; Harpending and Cochran 2002), and trust (oxytocin—see Kosfeld et al. 2005). And it seems highly likely that assertiveness, risk taking, and trust, like affiliative tendencies, are relevant to bedrock preferences for the conduct of group life. To complete the chain, it is indisputable that specific genes are relevant to biological systems. In fact, this is what genes do: they build proteins that are, among other things, neurotransmitters, the receptors for these neurotransmitters, or the enzymes involved with the transport, breakdown, or reuptake of neurotransmitters in key regions of the central nervous system. For example, a gene known as AVPR1 and associated with vasopressin receptors is thought to be the reason some mammalian fathers spend a great deal of time with their offspring, while other mammalian fathers are distant and detached from their families. Indeed,

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those fathers with a longer form of AVPR1 have more vasopressin receptors, and those with more receptors pay more attention to their mates and their progeny (see Hammock and Young 2005). This example is just one of many of the associations of allelic variations with downstream biological systems, as well as, subsequently, with phenotypic traits and behaviors. To be sure, these connections are unlikely to be simple. Interactions among genes and between genes and the environment abound, and the connection between personality traits and political views is anything but straightforward. Moreover, modern genetic work has found that wrapping patterns of the DNA, subtle markers outside the genome, and chemical methylation groups all have the potential to produce great differences in phenotype, even when the genome itself (the sequence of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs) is the same. Genes, then, are connected to current political beliefs not directly, but through a path common to most genetic influences on behavior. Individual variations in genes, and in the genetic sequences that regulate genes, interact with the environment to create individual variations in the biological systems, mostly located in the brain, that instantiate and support human behavior. These biological variations, in turn, interact with the environment in ways that lead to deep-seated variations in how individuals conceive of and respond to the regular challenges of large-scale social living. And, finally, these deep-seated variations in social temperament interact with the political climate to create the intellectually elaborated positions that are measured as popular political opinion. It is important to recognize that these genetically influenced, biologically instantiated temperaments need not be specific to politics, or to have evolved for politics, to be relevant to political opinion. A gut preference for order, something that has deep brain origins and substantial variability, can drive things as mundane as the appearance of a student’s dorm room and as abstract as his or her current political opinions (Carney, Jost, and Gosling 2008).

Genetics, Behaviors, and Attitudes If a link between genes and political attitudes is at least plausible, how is it possible to begin the research process of establishing empirically whether genetic variation actually does play a meaningful part in generating the broad variations observed in human political beliefs and behaviors? Research design options are much more abundant when studying nonhuman species. Then it becomes possible to strictly control the environment, to engage in selective breeding, and even to alter genes. By observing differences in the exploratory behavior of mice in an “open field” test and then breeding back those mice that are the most inquisitive and adventurous, it is possible, in just a few generations, to create a strain of mice that is extremely curious and extraverted (deFries, Gervais, and Thomas 1978). Similar practices can create strains of mice that have a strong preference for (or an equally strong aversion to) alcohol. And mice are not the only species in which it is apparent that genes influence behavior. Selective breeding in the lab has turned wild silver fox into domesticated pets (Trut 1999)



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and has created strains of birds that are either outgoing or timid, even when these birds are reared without any contact with their parents or other birds (Zimmer 2005). As the English naturalist Charles Darwin noted long ago, the incredible variation in behavioral tendencies among breeds of dogs (when all of these breeds were descended from wild wolves not all that many generations ago) is perhaps the clearest indication that genes affect behavioral patterns (for a summary of research on the link between genes and behavior in animals, see Gosling and John 1999). In the lab, it is possible to alter the sexual preferences of Drosophila (fruit flies) merely by exchanging one gene for another (Stockinger et al. 2005). Research on humans is quite another story. Because of obvious ethical concerns, it is impossible to spirit babies away from their parents to be raised in isolation just so the behavioral patterns of those offspring can be studied cleanly. Similar concerns preclude selective breeding or swapping out selected genes just to study variations in preferences and behaviors. Instead, research on the role of genetics in human behavior must proceed creatively and use events that transpire “naturally.” The first step is to find individuals who are similar in some ways, but who have different levels of genetic commonality. Thus behavior geneticists have long relied on studies of adoptive siblings and of twins. Adoption studies are valuable because they permit comparison of individuals who are reared in the same home by the same parents (and so have substantial environmental similarity), but who have no more than random genetic similarity. The question to test is whether adoptive siblings (with on average 0 percent genetic overlap in the variable portions of the genome) have political views that are as similar as those of nonadoptive siblings (the latter share on average 50 percent of their variable genetic heritage with their full siblings). A finding that adoptive siblings do have similar political views would suggest that genetics is irrelevant to political opinions, but a finding that adoptive siblings are less similar politically than nonadoptive siblings suggests that genetics could be a factor. Even more valuable are data on full siblings who were raised in different households, because this information allows a comparison of the power of genetic similarity plus environmental distinctiveness (adopted-away siblings) with environmental similarity plus genetic distinctiveness (adoptive siblings reared in the same household). Unfortunately, adoption studies are difficult to conduct. The total number of adoptions is falling, and it is challenging to acquire information on the attitudes of the genetic parents and the siblings of adopted-away individuals. Moreover, because the specific traits of interest in this chapter—political attitudes— do not become stable until early adulthood, adoption studies of politics cannot employ children, as is typical of adoption studies on other topics (for a review, see Plomin et al. 2001). As a result, we know of no large-scale adoption study aimed at identifying the sources of political attitudes. Fortunately, an alternative to adoption studies, while also facing challenges, has been employed frequently in the study of political attitudes: the classic twin design.

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Twins are analytically valuable not because they exist, but because they come in two quite different types. Monozygotic (MZ) twins develop from a single egg fertilized by a single sperm. After a period of time, usually a couple of days, and for reasons that are still not completely understood, this single zygote splits into two zygotes. Because they were once the same zygote, MZ twins have identical genetic inheritances. By contrast, dizygotic (DZ) twins develop from two separate eggs fertilized by two separate sperm, and so are in effect simply two full siblings who happen to be carried in the womb simultaneously. Like any full siblings, DZ twins share the same average of 50 percent of their genetic material. Because MZ twins are typically raised in the same family, just as DZ twins are typically raised in the same family, if MZ twins are much more similar on a trait, whether that trait is schizophrenia or political opinions, it can be inferred that the heightened genetic similarity of MZ twins relative to that of DZ twins is responsible. More specifically, behavior geneticists have derived a procedure to estimate the heritability of given traits: subtract the correlation of DZ twins on the trait of interest from the correlation of MZ twins and double the result (the doubling is done because the genetic difference between DZ twins and MZ twins is only 50 –100 and not 0 –100). Algebraically, the formula for heritability is (MZ – DZ)*2. Whatever is not attributable to heritability is assumed to be attributable to environmental forces. Interestingly, the classic twin design makes it possible to separate two aspects of the environment: shared and nonshared. Shared environment refers to that part of the environment likely to be experienced by both individuals; it is computed using (2*DZ) – MZ. Nonshared environment refers to those experiences unlikely to be shared even by two individuals growing up in the same household and is simply the variance left over—that is, 1 – MZ. Studying the importance of genetics is really the only way to study the importance of the environment. Indeed, one of the leading textbooks on behavior genetics points out that “genetic research provides the best available evidence for the importance of environmental factors” (Plomin et al. 2001, 297). Consider the common political science research design in which eighteen-year-olds and their parents are interviewed about their political beliefs (see, for example, Jennings and Niemi 1968). If the interviews reveal similarity between parents and their offspring, it is assumed that the similarity is attributable to active parental socialization (see Jennings and Niemi 1968; Niemi and Jennings 1991). But such an approach is valid only if it is believed that no similarity between parents and offspring stems from genetics. Because parents may shape both the genetic constitutions and the environments of their nonadoptive offspring, it is impossible for this design, as valuable as it otherwise is, to disambiguate genetics and shared environment. However, shifting to the classic twin design, in which the two types of twins supply variation in genetic similarity, allows the researcher to generate separate estimates for the effects of additive genetics and the environment.



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What do these estimates reveal about the importance of genetics and the environment? Table 3-1, adapted from Alford, Funk, and Hibbing (2005), analyzes information obtained from thousands of twins (for details on this database, see Maes, Neale, and Eaves 1997; Lake et al. 2000). For twenty-eight individual attitude items as well as for party identification and a composite measure of overall conservatism (the twenty-eight-item index score), the table shows the correlations for MZ twins, for DZ twins, and the resultant estimates for heritability, shared environment, and nonshared environment. These individual items make up the Wilson-Patterson Attitude Inventory (Wilson and Patterson 1968). Respondents were asked to give their reaction (positive, negative, or indifferent) to each of the topics listed. The important research question becomes: do the reactions of MZ twins to these items tend to be more similar than the reactions of DZ twins? According to the table, the answer to this research question is clearly yes. For each of the twenty-eight individual items, as well as for the composite indicator of attitudes and for party identification, MZ twins are more similar, meaning that genetics may very well be involved. Some differences between the similarities of MZ twins and of DZ twins are quite large, with heritability estimates at around .40. To delve even deeper into the meaning of these results, we will focus on the composite indicator of attitudes, labeled “overall conservatism” because conservative answers received higher values (see bottom of the table). The heritability of this additive index is .43, a substantial portion, particularly in light of political scientists’ tendency to assume that the heritability coefficient of political opinion is zero! Nevertheless, a heritability estimate of .43 leaves .57 to be attributed to environmental (and measurement error) factors, a point many observers seem to ignore upon first hearing of this finding. Behavior geneticists are not asserting that genetics determines political attitudes. Indeed, the only determinists around seem to be the many traditional social scientists who insist that genes are completely irrelevant and thus environmental factors determine political beliefs. For their part, behavior geneticists are merely using established techniques to try to understand the relative influence of genetic and environmental effects, and, by doing so, they are finding that the environment, to no one’s surprise, is extremely important. In fact, the classic twin design enables scientists to be more specific about the type of environment that is important and the conditions under which environmental influences become more or less powerful. To take one example, the relative roles of shared and nonshared environmental forces are interesting and surprising. The shared environment is all of the shared external influences that typically might lead to trait similarity between individuals. Siblings, for example, might share similar childhood environments, including similar parental interactions and similar physical, social, and economic environs. The unshared environment, by contrast, is composed of all the distinctive external influences that typically might lead to trait dissimilarity

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Table 3-1 Heritability of Selected Political Attitudes and Affiliations

School prayer Property tax Moral Majority Capitalism Astrology The draft Pacifism Unions Republicans Socialism Foreign aid X-rated movies Immigration Women’s liberation Death penalty Censorship Living together Military drill Gay rights Segregation Busing Nuclear power Democrats Divorce Abortion Modern art Federal housing Liberals 28-item index score Party affiliation

MZ correlation

DZ correlation

Heritability, (MZ – DZ)*2

Shared environment, (DZ*2) – MZ

Unshared environment, 1 – MZ

.66 .47 .42 .53 .48 .41 .34 .44 .48 .43 .41 .63 .45 .46 .56 .40 .67 .38 .60 .38 .43 .42 .47 .47 .64 .43 .36 .44

.46 .27 .22 .34 .28 .21 .15 .26 .30 .25 .23 .46 .29 .30 .40 .25 .52 .24 .46 .24 .30 .29 .34 .34 .52 .30 .26 .35

.41 .41 .40 .39 .39 .38 .38 .37 .36 .36 .35 .35 .33 .33 .32 .30 .30 .29 .28 .27 .26 .26 .26 .26 .25 .25 .20 .18

.25 .06 .03 .14 .09 .02 –.04 .07 .12 .07 .06 .28 .12 .13 .24 .10 .37 .09 .32 .11 .16 .16 .21 .21 .39 .18 .16 .26

.34 .53 .58 .47 .52 .59 .66 .56 .52 .57 .59 .37 .55 .54 .44 .60 .33 .62 .40 .62 .57 .58 .53 .53 .36 .57 .64 .56

.65 .55

.43 .48

.43 .14

.22 .41

.35 .45

Source: Adapted from John R. Alford, Carolyn L. Funk, and John R. Hibbing, “Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?” American Political Science Review 99 (May 2005): 153 –168. Note: Differences in correlations for MZ and DZ twins are statistically significant (p < .05) for all rows.



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across individuals. Although much is variable across siblings in the childhood environment, it is with the shift to adult life that the share of unique influences on siblings increases sharply, as peer, workplace, family, and physical settings typically diverge. Traditional political socialization studies have emphasized the role of shared environment, particularly active parental socialization, in shaping the attitudes of offspring, but the results described here do not suggest such a role. Like companion studies on personality traits and cognitive abilities (see Harris 1998), the evidence in Table 3-1 on political attitudes indicates that the shared environment has the smallest effect, frequently hovering around .0 and reaching a high of .39 (for attitudes toward abortion). The mean for all twenty-eight Wilson-Patterson items is only .16, and the overall index of conservatism is estimated to be .22. Contrast these numbers with the effects of nonshared environment: often in the .50 –.60 range, never falling below .33 (for “living together”), and averaging .53 for all of the twenty-eight Wilson-Patterson items. These numbers mean that when it comes to political attitudes, overall the environmental influences are perhaps slightly more important than the additive genetic forces, but the central aspects of the environment are less parental socialization than the idiosyncratic events that influence all people as they go about their lives. This is not to say that parents are unimportant, but only that their influence derives more from genetics than from active socialization. The most pertinent environmental influences are not those typically shared by family members, a finding that challenges much supposition, from Freud onward, about the importance of the family environment. Not only can behavior genetics alter perceptions about the overall influence of genetics, shared environment, and unshared environment, but it also can identify variations in the clout of these factors, depending on the individual trait being considered. For example, at the bottom of Table 3-1 party identification is quite distinct from the other political variables tested. Whereas the table reports that on average, attitudes toward individual topics in the Wilson-Patterson Attitude Inventory show shared environmental effects of just .16, party identification has a shared environmental estimate of .41, higher than that of any of the individual items. It would seem that although attitudes on issues are not so much shaped by parental socialization, the tendency to affiliate with either the Democratic or the Republican parties is heavily shaped by socialization. As such, this pattern of results fits very nicely with the classic work on socialization and party identification by Jennings and Niemi (1968; also see Niemi and Jennings 1991). They find that parental socialization (shared environment) has a more direct influence on party identification than on issue positions, and that adult experiences (unshared environment) play a large role in the post-adolescent reshaping of party allegiances. Ironically, Jennings and Niemi refer to this successful process of parental socialization as the ”inheritance” of party identification, something that, to a biologist, suggests genes rather than shared environment, but Jennings and Niemi clearly

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do not mean to suggest that genes play a role, even though behavior genetics research suggests they do. This pattern of results for issues and group identification also clearly parallels behavior genetic work on religion (for a summary, see Martin et al.1986; Truett et al. 1992; Bouchard and McGue 2003). Parental socialization is extremely important in the denominational affiliation (such as Jewish, Roman Catholic, Methodist, or Lutheran) of offspring, but it is not nearly as important in shaping actual religious beliefs and behaviors (such as belief in an afterlife and frequency of church attendance). Because in politics parents also socialize their offspring to affiliate with a certain group (such as the Democratic or the Republican Party), but are less successful in their efforts to socialize them to adopt particular beliefs on specific issues, one possible conclusion is that social group identities are much more susceptible than issue positions to active parental influence. Findings on the overall level of importance of the different components of the environment and on the distinctive origins of group affiliations, such as party identification, are valuable and would not be possible without research designs (such as the classic twin design) that afford leverage on both genetics and the environment. Still, the classic twin design is not perfect. Many scholars worry about the so-called equal environments assumption. Twin studies assume that the environments of MZ twins are not more similar than the environments of DZ twins. If this assumption is violated and if MZ twins not only are more genetically similar than DZ twins, but also are more environmentally similar, estimates of heritability such as those reported in Table 3-1 may be inflated because some differences in the two types of twins would have been attributed to genetic forces when they properly belonged to environmental forces (Horwitz et al. 2003; Richardson and Norgate 2005). For example, the markedly higher similarity of responses to a self-esteem question within a set of MZ twins compared with a set of DZ twins would lead to the conclusion that self-regard has a large, genetically heritable component. But variations in physical appearance likely play a large role in whether people receive positive or negative feedback from others, and, in turn, how they are perceived by others is likely an important environmental influence on self-regard. The equal environments assumption here would be that the relevant environmental factors for MZ twins would be no more similar than for DZ twins. However, because of their much greater physical resemblance MZ twins would likely experience much more similar treatment by others than would DZ twins. In this case, selfesteem could be genetically heritable or entirely determined by the social environment, because either factor would lead to greater similarity in identical twins. Supporters of the classic twin design respond by defending the equal environments assumption, and the debate is ongoing. The most important point in this debate is that the equal environments assumption is trait-specific. The environments of MZ twins are indeed more similar than the environments of DZ twins in some aspects, but are those



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aspects relevant to political beliefs? MZ twins, for example, are more likely than DZ twins to share the same bedroom and to have the same friends. But there is evidence that sharing a bedroom has little if any impact on similarity of political attitudes. Moreover, it turns out that part of the reason for more similar environments is itself genetic. Genetic predispositions affect the kind of environments people select into (or are selected into). If for genetic reasons two people have the same tastes, it is not surprising that they would be more likely than two less genetically similar people to have the same friends. So, ironically, violations of the equal environments assumption may result from genetics (just as a genetically driven similarity in physical appearance causes environmental similarity in treatment by others). Because behavior genetics derives separate estimates for the effects of genetics and the environment does not mean it is valid to conclude that genes and the environment work separately. They do not, and, in fact, the interaction of genes and the environment is taken for granted by behavior geneticists. In acknowledging the flaws of the classic twin design, it is important to maintain a sense of perspective, because no research design is without problems. Survey research is beset by issues surrounding sampling, question wording, question order, and response bias. Experiments cannot escape concerns about external validity (do behaviors in an artificial laboratory setting say anything about behavior in the real world?). Focus groups can be manipulated, intentionally or not, by a moderator or a particularly influential participant. But it is important not to be paralyzed by these inevitable flaws. If scholars waited for the perfect research design, no empirical work would ever be done. Instead, scholars must use the best techniques available while working to improve techniques and databases. In this way, progress is made toward understanding the human condition, and this progress is evident in behavior genetics. For example, researchers recently combined data on the political attitudes of twins with data on the attitudes of their parents as well as their nontwin siblings (Hatemi et al. 2007). Using this extended nuclear family model, investigators can test for the equal environments assumption (because nontwin siblings have been exposed to roughly the same shared environment as the twins). This model permits separate estimates of the effects of “twin-specific environments” and makes it possible to correct for violations of the equal environments assumption. We were encouraged to find that, if anything, these improvements strengthened the case for a genetic role in accounting for political beliefs. As techniques and databases continue to improve, ever more accurate estimates of the respective roles of genetics and the environment will be possible.

Discussion Incorporating genetic analysis into the study of public opinion in no way negates the traditional work being undertaken on the importance of environmental factors. As we hope we

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have made clear, if anything, work in behavior genetics has highlighted the importance of environmental forces. It is highly instructive that possibly 50 – 60 percent of variation in political attitudes is environmental and that this estimate rises to 80 –90 percent for social identities such as party identification. As demonstrated in the other chapters in this volume, specification of these environmental forces has progressed tremendously. Genes do not act in lieu of environmental forces; they act in concert with them. Genes are nothing more than chemicals that would do nothing if placed in a test tube. For them to do anything—to be expressed—there must be a change in their environment. As such, genes and the environment are inextricably linked. The new turn toward the genetic markers of political attitudes will not diminish previous work on the environmental influences of political attitudes, but it does indicate that the previous research are badly incomplete. At least 40 percent (and probably more) of the sources of variance in political attitudes are being ignored completely by those who insist that only the environment matters. Perhaps this situation is part of the reason traditional (environment-only) studies report disappointingly low explanatory power. By ignoring biology, scholars have been trying to explain the source of variance in political opinions with one hand tied behind their backs. It is quite likely that genes lay down predispositions and that environmental forces are best seen as being either consistent with, neutral toward, or opposed to those predispositions. Some people are probably genetically indeterminate with regard to politics, and many others no doubt harbor beliefs that go against their genetic “type.” Still others change their political views if their environment changes. Some critics argue that these changes and inconsistencies must mean genes are irrelevant, but this argument is a mistake. Because genes do not work in a digital either/or fashion and because they interact with environmental forces (not to mention other genes), they do not preordain particular beliefs for anyone; genes are much more subtle and interesting than that. Gradations and environmentally based changes are, therefore, not evidence that genes are disconnected from political beliefs. Behavior genetics suggests genes are quite relevant, and that suggestion opens up a new opportunity to document the full array of the sources of public opinion. Humans’ political beliefs are much more than reflections of their environment. Some children actively rebel against a parentally shaped political environment, while others happily embrace that same environment without so much as a second thought. Accepting that people have innate political biases can be humbling to those who hold out hopes that people are forever open to rational persuasion, but this realization could also help people to understand why their political opponents view politics so differently, a point that leads to a brief concluding look at genetics and tolerance. Typically, environmental determinists are the individuals least tolerant of diversity. Take, for example, the contemporary debate over the causes of homosexuality. Those stressing



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environmental causes are the ones most desirous of stamping out homosexuality by employing forms of environmental manipulation such as reindoctrination camps. More historically, the danger of attributing all behavior to environmental sources was chillingly apparent in Mao Zedong’s aborted attempt to foment a “cultural revolution” in China. It is now believed that more than twenty million Chinese starved because of the misguided belief that radical social engineering alone could make a better person. Believing that people are completely free to make themselves into whatever others want them to be is pretentious, ignorant, and—in light of consistent findings in behavior genetics—mistaken. In the political realm, those who believe political views are entirely environmental may be the least tolerant of the other side; they are the ones most baffled by the “erroneous” and intransigent positions of their opponents. Thus further evidence that political attitudes are in part genetic may increase the tolerance of those with alternative views and stimulate moderation, respect for opponents, and an associated willingness to compromise. But alongside this hopeful message we must juxtapose the possibility that individual predispositions toward tolerance are themselves in part genetic. If this possibility proves to be true, which we strongly suspect, efforts to encourage tolerance, while needed and worthwhile, are likely to have much more success with some individuals than with others.

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CHAPTER

5

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S "A HOUSE DIVIDED" SPEECH BY RANDALL E. ADKINS




14 $ Abraham Lincoln’s “A House Divided” Speech* !

(1858) 1. How did Lincoln’s acceptance of the Republican Party’s nomination for a U.S. Senate seat place him in a position to become the party’s presidential candidate in 1860? 2. How did the issue of slavery promote the Republican Party from minority party to majority party in 1860?

I

n the decade preceding the Civil War, the difficulty in resolving the issue of slavery created a realignment of party politics in the United States. Southern legislators blocked legislation necessary to construct a transcontinental railroad until slaveholders were permitted to take their slaves into the new territories. In 1854, Democratic senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois steered the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress. The act allowed for slavery in the new territories if approved by the settlers of that territory. In opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, an alliance of Whigs, northern Democrats, and Free-Soilers formed the Republican Party. While this coalition opposed the expansion of slavery into either the territories or new states, those associated also agreed on other issues, such as the modernization of banking, higher education, industry, transportation (particularly railroads), and free homesteads for farmers. At the Republicans’ first national nominating convention, held in 1856 in Philadelphia, John Frémont was chosen as the party’s first presidential candidate. Frémont dominated electoral voting in the northeast and northern Midwest that year, but lost to Democrat James Buchanan, who won the remaining parts of the Midwest and the South. The Republican Party quickly grew after this election, as many prominent Democrats were awarded with Republican gubernatorial or Senate nominations for switching parties.

*www.historyplace.com/lincoln/divided.htm

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Abraham Lincoln’s “A House Divided” Speech

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To complicate the slavery issue further, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1856) stated that Congress had no power to keep slavery out of the territories. The decision effectively nullified the Kansas-Nebraska Act. After the Dred Scott decision was announced, many Northerners began to feel that in order to prevent the expansion of slavery, the institution itself would have to be abolished. The total abolition of slavery, however, scared many moderates within the Republican Party because they believed that Southern states would leave the Union if slavery was threatened. Among the moderates who opposed the expansion, if not the abolition, of slavery was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln believed the practice would eventually die a natural death. In 1858, Lincoln was nominated by the Illinois Republican Party to run for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Stephen Douglas. In a speech delivered on June 17 at the close of the Republican State Convention, Lincoln caught the mood of many Republicans across the country who were increasingly concerned about the morality of maintaining the practice of slavery versus the need to maintain the union of the states. The phrase “house divided,” which comes from the New Testament book of Mark (3:25) was used frequently, but Lincoln’s speech brought a new familiarity to the term. The debates Lincoln and Douglas held that year received national attention and turned Lincoln into a serious threat to win the Republican nomination for president in 1860. As both candidate and president, Lincoln often disagreed with the “radical” wing of the Republican Party that advocated harsher measures toward the South. He was brilliant, however, in uniting all factions of the party to fight to save the Union. Lincoln successfully persuaded the party to pass major legislation to fulfill many parts of the Republican Party platform in addition to temporary higher taxes and tariffs to finance the war effort.

Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that


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agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination—piece of machinery, so to speak—compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning. The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained. But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more. This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of “squatter sovereignty,” otherwise called “sacred right of self-government,” which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: “It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of “Squatter Sovereignty,” and “sacred right of self-government.” “But,” said opposition members, “let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude



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slavery.” “Not we,” said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment. While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law case involving the question of a negro’s freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State and then into a Territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and law suit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro’s name was “Dred Scott,” which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers: “That is a question for the Supreme Court.” The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the endorsement. The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision. The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained! At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind—the principle for which he declares he has suffered so


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much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision “squatter sovereignty” squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding—like the mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand—helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point—the right of a people to make their own constitution— upon which he and the Republicans have never differed. The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection, with Senator Douglas’s “care not” policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are: First, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that “The citizens of each State, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” Secondly, That “subject to the Constitution of the United States,” neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott’s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State. Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending.



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It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left “perfectly free,” “subject only to the Constitution.” What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now: the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator’s individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly enough now: the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President’s felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President’s advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the President and others? We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen—Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance—and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few—not omitting even scaffolding—or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such a piece in—in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck. It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a State as well as Territory, were to be left “perfectly free,” “subject only to the Constitution.” Why mention a State? They were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution


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therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska bill;—I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a State over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion, his exact language is, “except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction.” In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by the United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the same question, as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of “care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up,” shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States. Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it? There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never differed.



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They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But “a living dog is better than a dead lion.” Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don’t care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the “public heart” to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas democratic newspaper thinks Douglas’s superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade—how can he refuse that trade in that “property” shall be “perfectly free”—unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition. Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday—that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us—he does not pretend to be—he does not promise ever to be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends—those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work— who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now?—now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.


CHAPTER

6

IN TOCQUEVILLE'S FOOTSTEPS BY RUSSELL J. DALTON

Excerpted from Russell J. Dalton, THE GOOD CITIZEN: HOW A YOUNGER GENERATION IS RESHAPING AMERICAN POLITICS, REVISED EDITION (Washington: DC, CQ Press, 2009), pp. 138-160.



CHAPTER

8 IN TOCQUEVILLE’S FOOTSTEPS

magine Alexis de Tocqueville’s amazement as he traveled through the United States in 1830–32. He started in New York, then traveled on to Buffalo and Detroit, where he had his first contact with Native Americans, and then back to the East through Canada. The following year he headed west through Pennsylvania by horse, down the Ohio River on a steamboat (which nearly sank), eventually reaching the port of New Orleans after three months of travel. In the midst of a rough and rugged new world, he saw a new democratic nation that differed dramatically from the autocratic political systems of Europe. Democracy in America was his tribute to the America public.1 Tocqueville saw Americans’ emphasis on participation, freedom, and equality as the foundation of this new democratic process. Americans were directly involved in governing and had created the modern world’s first democracy. The special nature of the American polity is central to our ideas about nation and citizenship. From John Winthrop’s description of colonial America as the City Upon a Hill to Ronald Reagan’s reiteration of this imagery (as a “Shining City upon a Hill,” no less), Americans view the United States as the first new nation. Tocqueville’s description of the American political culture was based on his knowledge of European politics. In other words, Tocqueville recognized what was distinct to Americans by comparing them to Europeans. There is a long history of such cross-national comparisons to gain insights into the American political culture (or the culture of any single nation).2

I

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I N TO C Q U E V I L L E ’ S F O OT S T E P S

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These past studies provide valuable evidence of the American political culture, but they often make conflicting claims. For instance, some observers stress the anti-statist and anti-government traditions, while others argue that Americans’ sense of national pride and allegiance to government are exceptional.3 Some repeat the Toquevillian observation about the participatory tendencies of Americans, but others lament the erosion of the very civil society that Tocqueville praised.4 There are assertions about the tolerance and pluralism of the political culture, while others point to America’s history of slavery and racial discrimination. We could easily expand this list. Some of these contrasting images can coexist because the United States is a large and diverse nation, and different parts of the society can hold different political values. In addition, American society is changing. Some scholars discuss American traditions at the founding of the Republic, in the twentieth century, or in contemporary times. In addition, these descriptive studies often lack systematic evidence. Even an insightful observer such as Tocqueville was limited by the evidence he could collect and his inability to see beyond observable behavior of the Americans’ he encountered to their individual inner values. Many of these same debates about citizenship exist in Europe and other contemporary democracies.5 Participation in election campaigns has decreased in most established democracies, and there are similar complaints about declining civic engagement. Analysts of European democracies cite the rise of individualism as a threat to the social compact of good citizenship. Indeed, if social modernization is altering citizenship in the United States, many of these patterns should be occurring in other established democracies. We follow a Tocquevillian logic in this chapter—comparing American norms of citizenship to other democratic publics. Such comparisons should show what is distinctly American about the political values examined here. The great contemporary chronicler of American society and politics, Seymour Martin Lipset, repeated a common view among political analysts when he stated that “those who know only one country, know no country.” 6 In addition, cross-national comparisons can identify common processes of social and political change that transcend any nation’s unique historical experiences.


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Our journey of comparison is much easier than Tocqueville’s—no horses or steamboats—because the surveys of American public opinion are part of two larger cross-national studies of citizenship.7 The 2004 General Social Survey is part of a larger International Social Survey Program (ISSP) studying these themes across dozens of nations. The 2005 CDACS survey replicates many questions included in the 2002 European Social Survey. So we can compare the meaning of citizenship between Americans and other publics and then examine how these norms shape other features of the political culture. THE NORMS OF CITIZENSHIP

Do Americans think of citizenship differently than most Europeans? In recent years many observers have stressed the supposed differences across the Atlantic. Robert Kagan’s popular book, Of Paradise and Power, summarizes these sentiments: “It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world. . . . Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” 8 Kagan was writing primarily about international orientations, but it reflects a broader comparison of the social elements of citizenship that supposedly vary between Americans and Europeans. This harks back to the tradition of treating the United States as exceptional in its social and political values.9 So let’s focus on the norms of citizenship and how they compare across contemporary democracies. Before comparing American and European opinions, it’s important to ask what differences might be expected in citizenship norms. Comparisons may vary between specific pairs of nations: Americans may be stronger adherents of one trait than the British, and less than the Japanese. But should we expect broad differences in citizenship norms between Americans and other democratic publics? Citizen Duty. These norms are the foundation of citizenship in almost any nation (Chapter 2). Previous research yields an ambiguous image of Americans as distinctly high on norms of duty. On the one hand, analysts frequently cite the revolutionary origins of the United States as the basis of a populist and anti-statist tradition, in which people question the government and their duty to obey.10 The framers structured government to limit its actions. We can see this anti-establishment tradition in current elections



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when even incumbents run as outsiders and rail against the government in Washington. On the other hand, it is unclear whether this anti-statist tradition affects feelings of citizen duty. For instance, the World Values Survey finds that Americans are less likely than the French, Germans, or British to say that cheating on one’s taxes or falsely claiming government benefits can be justified.11 Americans’ strong religious traditions may also stimulate feelings of duty in the political realm. Allegiance and patriotism are also commonly cited elements of the American political culture. This is a paradox of the American political culture: the praise for autonomy and resistance to government appears as common as feelings of allegiance and duty. Perhaps the explanation, as presented in previous chapters, is that different individuals emphasize these two, differing sets of norms. Citizen duty also embraces the responsibility to vote. Americans might score low on this norm because we know that turnout in U.S. elections is quite low. Yet, Chapter 3 found that Americans strongly endorse a norm that people should vote—even if they do not vote themselves. Low turnout partially reflects how elections are managed in America. Again, the evidence from previous research is ambiguous. Engaged Citizenship. This combines several different elements: participation, autonomy, and solidarity (see Chapter 2). Election turnout aside, most analysts stress the participatory traditions in the United States. America is supposedly the nation of joiners and doers, spurred on the populist spirit of the American political culture. The political creed of activism is interlaced throughout U.S. history, as portrayed in Tocqueville’s early description. In addition, populist traditions should stimulate norms of autonomy. Good citizens will believe that they should be informed and politically independent. Previous cross-national surveys generally find that Americans are more politically active than other democratic publics, and we similarly expect stronger participatory and autonomy norms.12 Engaged citizenship also includes solidarity norms promoting a concern for others. Such sentiments are widely identified with European democracies in sync with their large social welfare programs. Such values flow from the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic traditions in Europe.13 Typically, analysts portray the United States as a contrasting case. America is the land of rugged individualism, and critics cite underdeveloped social policies and income inequality as consequences of


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these American values. We expect that Americans should give less importance to solidarity norms than European publics. Taken together, we have unclear expectations about how Americans should compare to other democratic publics on both dimensions of citizenship. In terms of citizen duty, previous studies yield mixed advice on how Americans might position themselves. In terms of engaged citizenship, the expectations are clearer but move in opposite directions for different elements of these norms. Americans should stress the importance of participation and autonomy, while giving less importance to solidarity. Thus, the mix of these contrasting elements will determine the overall level of engaged citizenship. These contrasting images of citizenship between Americans and Europeans would provide a rich basis for theoretical debate—which would never be resolved if it remained a debate between pundits and philosophers. In fact, Tocqueville himself saw these contradictions and said America was “a mixture of vices and virtues that is rather difficult to classify and that does not form a single picture.” However, we can compare Americans’ citizenship norms to other nations using a cross-national survey that includes the citizenship questions. The 2004 International Social Survey Program included the citizenship questions in coordinated surveys of 19 established democracies including the United States.14 Figure 8.1 presents the average importance Americans attach to each of the ten citizenship norms (see Chapter 2) and the average for the other eighteen established democracies. The duty-oriented items are to the left of the figure, and the engaged citizenship items to the right. Americans broadly place more importance on citizenship, ranking almost all the items as more important than other democratic publics. In a few instances the gap is substantial—serving in the military, keeping watch on government, social activism—and these items span both duty and engagement norms. There is one exception. Concern for the needy in the world is significantly lower among Americans when compared to other publics. This may reflect the stronger traditions of social citizenship in many European democracies, as well as their large welfare state programs. The distinct national patterns of citizenship are seen in Figure 8.2. To create this figure, we first calculate the two dimensions of citizenship for



FIGURE 8.1

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Comparing the United States to Other Democracies

䊳 Americans attach more importance to most citizenship items than do people in other advanced industrial democracies. 7

Importance average

6 5 4 3 2 1

nd de r

sta

uc ts Un

od Pr

W a m tch en t W or ld be tte r U. S. be tte r rn

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y ar ilit M

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Established democracies

Note: Eighteen nations are combined for the established democracies scores (N is approximately 24,000). Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program.

all nineteen nations.15 Then, we compute the average score for each nation on both indices. The horizontal dimension in the figure represents a nation’s score on the citizen duty index; the vertical dimension is the nation’s score on engaged citizenship. American citizenship norms are not unique, but they are distinctive. Americans are second highest in citizen duty. More than most other publics, Americans believe a good citizen pays taxes, serves in the military, obeys the laws, and votes. Several other nations that are high in citizen duty also share a British heritage—Canada, Australia, and Ireland, plus Britain itself. This suggests that cultural elements of citizen duty derive from this legacy, perhaps from a tradition of popular sovereignty and the expectation of citizen allegiance in response. Most Scandinavian nations


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FIGURE 8.2

Citizen Duty and Engaged Citizenship

䊳 Americans are very high in feelings of citizen duty and above average in feelings of engaged citizenship. 0.8 0.6

Portugal Spain

Engaged citizen

0.4 0.2

Swiss

Austria

Ireland USA

Aus Canada NL France Denmark Ger(W) Norway –0.2 Sweden Ger(E) NZ Japan –0.4 Flanders Finland Britain –0.6 0

–0.8 –0.8 –0.6 –0.4 –0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Citizen duty Note: Figure entries are national positions based on mean scores on the citizen duty and engaged citizenship factor scores. Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program.

are located near the midpoint on citizen duty, and the lowest nations include several that have a German background: East and West Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Americans also score above most nations in engaged citizenship as shown on the vertical axis. Given the tradition of social citizenship in Europe, the relatively high placement of the United States is surprising, since the public in several welfare states (such as Britain, Germany, Sweden, and Norway) score at or below the overall average. As Figure 8.1 suggests, Americans’ positive scores on engaged citizenship reflect participatory norms beyond voting and feelings of political autonomy. However, Americans are not dramatically different from Europeans on the two combined measures of social citizenship.



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The high levels of citizenship among Americans—both citizen duty and engaged citizenship—are surprising. This book opened by citing the mounting claims that citizenship and democracy are at risk in the United States. Yet, Americans display a stronger sense of citizen duty than most other established Western democracies. And despite claims of the individualism of the American political culture, the norms of engaged citizenship are also relatively strong in the United States. In short, if democracy is supposedly at risk because of its citizens, there is little cross-national evidence that the American public holds citizenship norms that deviate from the range of other established democracies. Because we have a cross-national public opinion survey from only a single time point, we cannot track how citizenship norms have changed over the years. However, as noted in Chapter 3, generational comparisons can suggest how these norms may be changing—and thus show the citizenship trajectories of nations over time. It is presumed that citizenship norms reflect core values that become fixed in political identities early in life, and then generally persist over time. Comparing the distribution of citizenship norms across generations suggests how norms have shifted across the decades. Figure 8.3 displays the citizenship norms for five generations in the United States and for the other established democracies.16 The dashed lines represent American generations. Two findings stand out. First, the norms of citizen duty decline among younger generations for both Americans and other nationalities. The oldest U.S. generation is significantly above the overall average in citizen duty, the youngest generation is below the average. This is a large change across generations that span several decades of U.S. history. In fact, the size of the decline in duty-based norms in the other democracies (r= –.24) is even greater than among Americans (r= –.17). This common trend reinforces this book’s thesis that social modernization is producing a norm shift through changing generational experiences, increased affluence and education, changing economic and social structures, and the other forces of modernization. Second, patterns of generational change differ for engaged citizenship. Support for engaged citizenship increases fairly steadily between older and younger Americans. In contrast, there is little generational change in these norms in other democracies. It’s possible that this pattern reflects


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FIGURE 8.3

Generations and Citizenship Norms

䊳 Citizen duty decreases among the young in the United States and other democracies, while engaged citizenship increases among younger Americans. 0.8 0.6

Average score

0.4 0.2 0 –0.2 –0.4 Pre WWII

Duty U.S. Engaged U.S. Duty other democracies Engaged other democracies Boomers

1960s

Gen X

Gen Y

Generations Source: 2004 International Social Survey Programs.

the stronger commitment to social citizenship that is ingrained in European political cultures. As some elements of engaged citizenship have decreased over time, others have grown—so little changes over time.17 If we combine both findings, this may explain why the process of generational change—and political change—is so apparent in the United States. The norms of the “greatest generation” of Americans heavily emphasize citizen duty and give much less importance to engaged citizenship. Younger Americans are sharply different; they give roughly equal weight to both sets of norms. Thus, generational change in the United States has markedly altered citizenship norms, and this is more easily noticed by political analysts and has more obvious effects on the style of politics. In Europe and most other established democracies, in contrast, the generation shift in citizenship norms is more modest. These publics have slowly shifted toward engaged citizenship, but at a slower rate. The pace of social and political change is slower than in the United States.



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In summary, although generational change in citizenship norms is more modest outside the United States, the shift from citizen duty to engaged citizenship is broadly occurring across most advanced industrial democracies. Consequently, norm shift is not a unique American experience, but reflects the forces of social modernization touching all these nations. The following section compares whether citizenship norms have similar cross-national effects for participation, tolerance, and democratic values. COMPARING THE CONSEQUENCES OF CITIZENSHIP

Political culture theory implies that citizenship norms should shape peoples’ attitudes and behaviors, since these norms define what individuals feel is expected of them in political life. Having examined a host of effects for the American public, we can now extend these analyses to other established democracies. While Americans may be distinct in the levels of citizenship norms or the specific social conditions that shapes these norms, the effects of citizenship norms should be similar across nations. For instance, if engaged citizenship generally encourages contentious political action in America, then we should also see this in other nations. So let’s examine three traits that are central to this study’s descriptions of the impact of citizenship norms in the United States: political participation, political tolerance, and democratic values. Participation since Tocqueville

On his travels through America, Tocqueville was struck by the participatory tendencies of Americans, especially compared to Europeans. This has remained a common description of the American political culture until recently (see Chapter 4). In the past decade, however, a growing number of politicians, pundits, and political scientists have asserted that the American political spirit has fundamentally changed. For instance, a 2006 report by the National Conference on Citizenship warns that “without strong habits of social and political participation, the world’s longest and most successful experiment in democracy is at risk of losing the very norms, networks, and institutions of civic life that have made us the most emulated and respected nation in history.” 18 The report then updates its 2000 findings to allow that “some aspects of civic health have modestly improved since 2000. Many more have worsened.” 19 This notion that


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FIGURE 8.4

Political Participation in the United States and Other Democracies

䊳 Except for voting, Americans are as active or more active than other democratic publics. 100

Percentage

80

60

40

20

United States

co tt C po on lit tac ici t an M ee tin g De m on str at e Co n m tac ed t ia In te fo rne ru t m

Bo y

s

nv ot inc he e rs Pe tit ion Do na te $

Co

sc us Di

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0

Established democracies

Note: Eighteen nations are combined for the established democracies scores. Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program.

political participation is dropping to unprecedented levels has become the clarion call of those who see American democracy at risk. Chapter 4 presented several trends suggesting that non-electoral forms of participation are actually increasing among Americans, while election turnout is decreasing. Indeed, similar patterns are occurring in many other advanced industrial democracies.20 The 2004 International Social Survey Program (ISSP) compares Americans to other democratic citizens—much as Tocqueville did on the basis of his personal impressions.21 Figure 8.4 displays the percentage of Americans who have engaged in eleven different political activities in comparison to citizens in other established democracies. Clearly, Americans fall behind most other nations in voting; only 63 percent of Americans say they voted in the last national



FIGURE 8.5

149

Political Participation

䊳 Americans score relatively low on electoral participation, but near the top on non-electoral participation. 0.8

Non-electoral participation

0.6 0.4 0.2 0 –0.2

Canada NZ Austria France Norway Swiss Ger(E) Denmark Portugal Finland Ger(W) Sweden Spain Australia NL Britain Ireland USA

–0.4 –0.6

Japan

–0.8 –0.8 –0.6 –0.4 –0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Electoral participation

Note: Figure entries are national mean scores on electoral and non-electoral participation indices. Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program.

elections, compared to 84 percent in the other democracies. Looking at participation beyond voting, however, Americans generally participate more than other democratic publics. For example, Americans are more active in signing petitions, donating funds to political groups, contacting politicians, attending meetings, and participating in Internet forums. This high level of American participation beyond elections is documented in other recent comparative studies.22 Another perspective on participation patterns compares the United States to each of the other established democracies in the ISSP. To simplify the presentation, I’ve constructed two participation indices (Figure 8.5).23 Electoral participation is displayed on the horizontal axis. Americans score third from the bottom among these nineteen democracies (to the far left of the horizontal axis). This is a common pattern, reflecting the


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low turnout in U.S. elections. The second index combines all the forms of non-electoral participation, and this is the vertical dimension in the figure. In these terms, Americans score second highest in non-electoral action, higher than Swedes, Danes, the Dutch, and other publics that typically have high levels of voting. In other words, Americans are politically engaged, but not so much in electoral politics. Chapter 3 suggested that participation patterns are changing because of changing citizenship norms. In the United States, duty-based citizenship encourages participation in elections and party politics, but discourages direct action and contentious action. Conversely, engaged citizenship stimulates participation in direct actions and protests, while only modestly encouraging electoral participation. So changing citizenship norms should also shift participation patterns. This relationship between norms and participation should not be a distinctly American experience, however. If our general idea is correct, these norms should affect political action in other democracies. For instance, Swedes who define their citizen role in terms of engaged citizenship should be more likely to protest, pursue methods of direct action, and perhaps vote at a lower rate than duty-oriented citizens. Figure 8.6 shows the cross-national link between citizenship norms and participation for all nineteen nations. The top panel of the figure presents the relationship between citizen duty and the two participation indices in Figure 8.5. As citizen duty increases, so also does participation in electoral politics, since one of the first duties of citizenship is to vote. Simultaneously, citizen duty diminishes non-electoral forms of action. These contrasting relationships are quite strong, and generally apply across the specific activities included in both indices. Engaged citizenship has very different implications for political participation. As engaged citizenship increases, this modestly stimulates electoral participation. Elections are the foundation of democracy, and both norms of citizenship encourage voting. However, engaged citizenship even more strongly encourages non-electoral activities, such as boycotts, demonstrations, direct contact with politicians and the media, and internet activism. The contrasts between the two panels of Figure 8.6 graphically illustrate the impact of citizenship norms on participation. As demographic change alters the balance of duty-based and engaged citizenship, a shift in partic-



FIGURE 8.6

151

Citizenship and Electoral Participation

䊳 Citizen duty increases electoral participation but decreases non-electoral participation, while engaged citizenship increases both forms of participation. Citizen Duty

0.5 0.3 0.1 –0.1 –0.3 Low

High

Middle Engaged Citizenship

0.5 0.3 0.1 –0.1 –0.3 Low

Middle Electoral

High Non-electoral

Note: All nineteen advanced democracies. Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program.

ipation patterns should follow. If an individual high in citizen duty from the “greatest generation” leaves the electorate, and is replaced by an individual high in engaged citizenship, the repertoire of political action will also change. The likelihood of voting will decrease slightly between these two individuals. But the use of direct and contentious forms of action will markedly increase. This shift has been occurring in most established


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democracies, even if at different rates and within different institutional settings. Changing citizenship norms are reshaping how democratic citizens relate to government and participate in the democratic process. Tolerance

Tolerance lies at the very heart of a democratic political culture (see Chapter 5). However, analysts and philosophers debate the nature and measurement of political tolerance. Many people say they are committed to tolerance in the abstract but have difficulty applying this to groups that they dislike. Moreover, one might debate what tolerance really means. Is it tolerant to allow free expression to hatred and violence? The Germans outlaw Nazi propaganda and paraphernalia; it is illegal to deny the Holocaust, to sell a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf or to even display a swastika. Would a good democrat prefer that Germany tolerate fascists goose-stepping down their streets wearing swastikas? Is America more democratic because we allow fascist parades, even when they run through Jewish communities? Or does this public action have different meaning for Germans and Americans? Does tolerance really mean we should ignore ideas of right or wrong because we are democrats or because we assume the political correctness logic that all viewpoints are equal? I raise these difficult questions because the cross-national study of tolerance often evokes such issues. If there are problems in theorizing and measuring the tolerance of Americans, how do we compare American tolerance to that of Swedes or Germans? The best cross-nationally comparable method is probably the “content-controlled” measures of tolerance discussed in Chapter 5. This method asks individuals which groups they dislike the most and then asks about tolerance toward these groups.24 Accordingly, it is tempting to compare Germans’ tolerance toward their least-liked groups with Americans’ tolerance toward the groups they dislike the most. However, the 2004 ISSP used a simpler and more direct measure of asking whether the following three groups should be allowed to hold public meetings: religious extremists, people who want to overthrow the government by force, and people prejudiced against any racial or ethnic group. Without looking at the empirical findings, one might think that this list would severely test the tolerance of Americans. The ISSP survey



FIGURE 8.7

153

Political Tolerance

䊳 Americans score higher than other democratic publics on tolerance toward religious extremists and even those who want to overthrow the government. 3

Tolerance — Religious extremists

USA

2.5

NZ

Finland Canada Sweden

2

Spain NL

1.5

Austria Flanders

Swiss Ger(W)

Japan

Ireland Britain Norway Denmark Australia France Portugal

Ger(E)

1 1

1.5

2

Tolerance — Overthrow government Note: Figure entries are national mean scores on willingness to allow public meetings by a) people who want to overthrow the government by force, or b) religious extremists. The scale was scored: 1) should definitely not be allowed, to 4) should definitely be allowed. Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program.

was completed when memories of the September 11 terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists were still fresh in most people’s minds. Racial tensions also have deep roots in the American historical experience. Figure 8.7 displays the tolerance toward religious extremists and those who want to overthrow the government for the established democracies in the ISSP survey. Perhaps surprisingly, Americans are the most tolerant nation on both dimensions (and the same applies to the racial tolerance question). For instance, even in the wake of September 11, a full 73 percent of Americans say a public meeting by religious extremists should be allowed, compared to an average of only 29 percent across all nineteen nations. In addition, 30 percent of Americans would allow a public meeting by a group trying to overthrow the government, compared to 14 percent among all these democracies. Moreover, this is not simply an artifact


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of the groups included in the ISSP survey, since an earlier cross-national comparison of tolerance using a content-controlled method also ranked the American public quite high.25 One should interpret such percentages with a dose of skepticism because tolerance is such a complex attitude. Yet, these results may be surprising because there is so little systematic evidence of such attitudes, and many pundits stake their claims without systematic evidence. Or perhaps this is surprising because Americans so quickly accept the often-critical comments about this aspect of the American political culture, proffered routinely by pundits both at home and abroad. Certainly there are aspects of the American political culture that deserve criticism. But far from an example of the erosion of democratic values, Americans express more support for the political rights of negative social groups than do most other democratic publics. Tolerance is best learned through the experience of living in a democratic society where tolerance is practiced. Tolerance is also linked to the processes of social modernization discussed throughout this book (see Chapter 5). Consequently, tolerance in the United States and other democracies should generally increase over time, and it should be linked to social characteristics and citizenship norms that reflect social modernization.26 Figure 8.8 shows that across all these nations in the ISSP, strong feelings of citizen duty systematically decrease political tolerance. The relationship in the United States is almost identical to the average of the other 18 nations. Simultaneously, engaged citizenship increases political tolerance in general and for each of these three groups. Citizenship norms do not have equal and strong effects across all democracies, but they function in the expected direction. The variability across nations may reflect the differential salience of these challenging groups or specific national conditions.27 In addition, the levels of tolerance are much higher among the better educated, and distinctly higher among younger generations. Across all Western democracies, for instance, 41 percent of the World War II generation scores at the lowest tolerance level, compared to only 28 percent among Generation Y. This suggests that the same general forces of social modernization that are at play in the United States are also increasing tolerance in other democracies.



FIGURE 8.8

155

Citizenship and Political Tolerance

䊳 Citizen duty decreases political tolerance, and engaged citizenship increases tolerance. 1.8

Tolerance score

r = .06

1.7 r = –.12

1.6 Citizen duty Engaged citizen 1.5 Low

Middle

High

Note: The figure plots the mean score on the three-item tolerance scale. Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program, all nineteen advanced democracies.

Democratic Norms

Perhaps the harshest claims of the crisis-of-American-democracy literature are those asserting that Americans are losing faith in their democratic system. The list of pessimists includes an impressive roster of American politics scholars.28 If you want to lose faith in government, you need go no further than the conclusions of these researchers. The sentiments are shared by many political elites, and they have repeated this refrain over the past several decades. For instance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer recently said: “I worry about indifference and cynicism because indifference means nonparticipation and cynicism means a withdrawal of trust. . . . [W]ithout trust and participation, the Constitution cannot work.” 29 Can the state of democracy really be so fragile? Has so much changed since Tocqueville’s description of the democratic spirit of America or


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the early studies extolling America’s civic culture?30 In a recent book, I tracked the decreases in political support in most established democracies.31 Trust of political elites and key democratic institutions has clearly eroded over the past two generations. Where once most Americans trusted their government to do right, now a majority doubt its trustworthiness. Instead of the loyal and supportive citizen, the political skeptic is now more common. Yet, we should not jump to simple conclusions. A thorough analysis of opinion data shows that people today are more skeptical about political elites, and even some political institutions—given the nefarious actions of some elected political officials, such skepticism might seem warranted. However, these publics are also committed to democratic ideals and core democratic principles. People have become “critical citizens” or “dissatisfied democrats” who expect more of their government, and they express their dissatisfaction when politics falls short of its democratic ideal. In many ways, commitment to democratic values is more important than trust in the politicians who currently hold office. Therefore, we should compare support for democratic principles across the nations included in the International Social Survey Program using the same set of items that we examined for the American public in Figure 7.4. Several of the questions tap support for political rights identified with democracy: government authorities respect and protect the rights of minorities; government authorities treat everyone equally; politicians take into account the views of the citizens; and people should be given more opportunities to participate. In addition, another item taps a potential dimension of social rights that is often stressed in European conceptions of democracy: all citizens should have an adequate standard of living. Even if contemporary publics have doubts about politicians and governments, people remain strongly supportive of democratic principles (Figure 8.9). On a 7-point scale of importance, most people rate both political rights and social rights as very important. The horizontal dimension shows that Americans rank fairly high in their support for political rights, which should be reassuring for those who wonder if current political tensions and the strains of battling international terrorism have eroded these democratic values. In fact, several of the nations that score



FIGURE 8.9

157

Democratic Values

䊳 Americans score above average in support for political rights and about average on support for social rights.

Democracy — Social rights

6.8 Spain Ireland Portugal France Norway Australia Denmark Sweden Finland Ger(E) NZ Britain USA NL Austria Canada Swiss Ger(W)

6.3

Flanders Japan 5.8 5.8

6.3

6.8

Democracy — Political rights Note: Figure entries are national mean scores on four questions on the importance of political rights in a democracy and one question on the importance of an adequate standard of living. The scale was scored from 1=not at all important to 7=very important. Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program.

above the United States—East Germany, Spain, and Portugal—might place such emphasis on political rights because they have experienced autocratic governments in their recent past. Americans’ commitment to democratic principles is alive and well (although I recognize that further improvements should be encouraged). The vertical dimension in the figure measures support for social rights as a democratic principle. One might expect that the individualist orientation of Americans will be most apparent here, which is linked to the limited welfare state policies of the United States. Many European political figures often criticize the United States for being an “elbow society” where people are pushing each other aside in their efforts to gain materialist success and where social protections are limited. Yet even on the


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FIGURE 8.10

Citizenship and Democratic Rights

䊳 Both norms of citizenship increase support for political rights.

Importance of political rights

r = .32 6.5 r = .20

6 Citizen Duty Engaged Citizen 5.5 Low

Middle

High

Note: Figure entries are national mean scores on four questions of the importance of political rights in a democracy. The scale is scored from 1= not at all important to 7 = very important. Source: 2004 International Social Survey Program, all nineteen advanced democracies.

social rights dimension, Americans rank near the middle of these other democracies. I have focused on democratic values in part to emphasize the positive aspect of the political culture in most democracies—a theme that is often overlooked in the crisis-of-democracy literature. In addition, citizenship norms can reinforce these values. As argued in Chapter 7, good citizenship in a democracy should be positively related to support for democratic principles. However, engaged citizenship more strongly embraces the values of democracy because it emphasizes the participatory norms and autonomy underlying democratic values. Duty-based citizenship encourages support for democratic principles, but these partially conflict with the majoritarian and social order elements of these norms. Figure 8.10 displays the relationship between citizenship norms and the index of democratic political rights for these democracies. Both citizenship norms strengthen democratic values. However, engaged citizenship has a



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notably stronger impact than citizen duty.32 This means that either definition of good citizenship reinforces democratic political rights among the public. However, norms of engaged citizenship stimulate key democratic rights more strongly than citizen duty. Thus, norm shift reinforces the principles of democracy, a fact that hardly seems a source of political crisis.33 A good democrat can criticize the government for its failings, while remaining committed to democratic principles. Indeed, democratic principles provide a valuable framework for judging the performance of governments. And in a world where some politicians seem preoccupied with security and order to the detriment of civil liberties, such a commitment to democratic values by the public should be applauded. CITIZENSHIP IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

This chapter represents what might be called a social science version of Einstein’s relativity theory. In public opinion there are few absolutes, and we can best understand any single nation by comparing it to other reference points. So, determining the political health of the American polity requires either a comparison relative to other times (are we getting better or worse?) or a comparison to other nations (how are we doing relative to other democracies?). While other chapters described the citizenship norms of Americans, this chapter compared American public opinion to other established democracies. The implicit logic is that if the opinions and political actions of Americans are placing democracy at risk, then this should be apparent in the United States ranking low in key elements of a democratic political culture. For instance, Americans would be less supportive of democratic values or distinctly less participatory than other established democracies. Such comparisons are often lacking from the American political science literature, but these comparisons are often made by European scholars who think more comparatively.34 Our cross-national comparisons provide little evidence of basic flaws in the American political culture—at least on the dimensions we compared. Americans are less active in elections, but they participate more frequently in a range of other political activities. American levels of tolerance and democratic values should be a source of reassurance about the vitality of American democracy, not a cause of concern.


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This does not mean that the American political culture is a shining model that all should emulate; I never intended this chapter to be a “USA first!” presentation. There are problems and challenges that face the American public and polity, and this applies to any contemporary democracy. For instance, French bookstores are filled with titles such as France in Freefall, Gallic Illusions and France’s Misfortune. “Declinism” has become a school of thought among French intellectuals. The British democracy audit is equally critical of the state of that nation.35 Throughout the 1990s, the Japanese were offered a series of books that explained the decline of the nation. In most democracies, it seems, political analysts clamor to discuss what is wrong with politics in their nation. Such criticism is how governments and democracy improve, to be sure, but accurate criticism is the most valuable of all. Cross-national comparisons can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a polity—while domestic analysts often focus on only the negative side of the scorecard. If one compares the United States to Britain or Germany, for example, one typically sees positive and negative features of both democratic systems. Certainly there are features of the American political culture that represent potential problems for the nation, such as the low levels of voting. However, only by comparing Americans’ opinions to other democracies can we develop a reference point for judging political realities. In comparison to other democracies, the American political culture still contains many of the values that make for vibrant democracy, and these may have even increased over the past several decades. Tocqueville would not recognize contemporary America, but he still might conclude that his observations about the democracy in America generally hold true today.


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CHAPTER 8 1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. New York: Knopf, 1960. 2. See the examples cited in Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective. New York: Basic Books, 1963; Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. New York: W. Norton, 1997. Lipset includes Max Weber, Friedrich Engels, James Bryce, Gunnar Martial, Louis Hart, and other great social commentators in this list. 3. Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide. New York: Routledge, 1990; Anthony King, “Distrust of government: Explaining American exceptionalism.” In Susan Pharr and Robert Putnam, eds., Disaffected Democracies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 4. These points are discussed extensively in Chapter 4 in this book. 5. Bas Denters, Oscar Gabriel, Mariano Torcal. “Norms of good citizenship.” In Jan van Deth, J. Ramón Montero, and Anders Westholm, eds., Citizenship and Involvement in Europe. London: Routledge, 2006; Robert Putnam, Democracies in Flux. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Dietlind Stolle, “The sources of social capital.” In Marc Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle, eds., Generating Social Capital. Civil Society and Institutions in Comparative Perspective. New York: Palgrave, 2003; Helmut Klages, “Engagementpotenzial in Deutschland.” In Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, eds., Freiwilliges Engagement in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. 6. Lipset, American Exceptionalism, 17; Rudyard Kipling perhaps stated it more eloquently when he said, “And what should they know of England, who only England know?” from “The English Flag,” in Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses (London: Methuen, 1892), stanza 1. 7. The other chapters of this volume were written and reviewed by CQ Press while I waited for the release of the 2004 ISSP. So this chapter is really a test/comparison of cross-national patterns after the U.S. survey had been analyzed and described. 8. Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. New York: Knopf, 2003. 9. Lipset, American Exceptionalism; Deborah Madsen, American Exceptionalism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998; Charles Lockhart, The Roots of American Exceptionalism: History, Institutions and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 10. Lipset, American Exceptionalism, ch. 1; Lipset, Continental Divide, ch. 2. 11. Ronald Inglehart et al. Human Beliefs and Values. Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 2004. 12. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963; Sidney Verba, Norman Nie, and Jae-on Kim, Participation and Political Equality. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978; Samuel Barnes, Max Kaase et al., Political Action. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1979; Pippa Norris, The Democratic Phoenix. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Russell Dalton, Citizen Politics, 4th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006. 13. T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, ed. T. Bottomore. London: Pluto Press; 1992 originally published 1950; Ole Borre and Elinor Scarbrough, eds., The Scope of Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 14. The ISSP data were provided by the Zentralarchiv für empirische Sozialforschung at the University of Cologne (ZA 3950). The 2004 ISSP includes: the United States, Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Flanders, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. I do not include the new democracies in this survey because we are focusing on how citizenship has evolved in affluent, established democracies. Different causal processes are likely at work in new democracies as people first learn democratic citizenship. 15. I replicated the two-dimensional factor structure described in Chapter 2. Engaged citizenship was the first dimension, explaining 25.9 percent of the variance in these ten items; and citizen duty was the second dimension (21.7 percent variance). In general terms, the factor analysis for these nineteen nations produced the same general structure as for the U.S. analyses. I then computed factor scores for the two dimensions, and the average scores for each nation locate nations in Figure 8.2. 16. The U.S. patterns in Figure 8.1 are slightly different in absolute values from the generational comparisons of Figure 3.1 because the citizenship scores were recalculated based on the pooled factor analysis of all nineteen nations. Generation groups are defined in the same way as in Figure 3.1: PreWWII are those who came of age before 1946; boomers came of age between 1946 and 1960; the


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17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

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Sixties generation was between 1961 and 1975; Generation X was between 1976 and 1990; Generation Y was after 1990. For instance, there are small age differences in the importance attached to understanding the opinions of others or helping those in need throughout the world, but the young are distinctly more likely to say it is important to keep watch on government and be active in associations. National Conference on Citizenship, America’s Civic Health Index: Broken Engagement. Washington: National Conference on Citizenship, 2006 (www.ncoc.org): 4. The report also presents a measure of America’s civic health, which shows an improvement since 2000; but then the report drops “three controversial measures” to produce a continuing decline since 2000: 8. Ibid., 4. Martin Wattenberg, Where Have All the Voters Gone? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002; Robert Putnam ed., Democracies in Flux. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Russell Dalton and Martin Wattenberg, eds., Parties without Partisans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, ch. 3. The question asked: “Here are some different forms of political and social action that people can take. Please indicate, for each one, whether you have done any of these things in the past year.” The 2002 European Social Survey and the 2005 U.S. Citizens, Involvement, and Democracy surveys also included a battery of different political activities that people might have done in the previous twelve months. Similar to the ISSP findings, fewer Americans vote in national elections, and Americans are less likely than Europeans to buy or avoid products for political reasons. For most other measures, however, Americans are more active than Europeans. For instance, 35 percent of Americans have signed a petition in the past two years, compared to 28 percent of Europeans; 23 percent of Americans have displayed campaign buttons or stickers during an election, compared to 9 percent of Europeans; and 21 percent of Americans have contributed money to a political cause, compared to 8 percent of Europeans. Similar cross-national patterns emerge from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project, Russell Dalton, “The myth of the disengaged American.” In Public Opinion Pros (October 2005), also reprinted at www.cses.org. Factor analyses identified two dimensions. The electoral dimension includes vote, discussing politics, and trying to convince others. The remaining items are strongly related to a second, non-electoral dimension. I then computed factor scores on both dimensions and compared national scores in Figure 8.5. Mark Peffley and Robert Rohrschneider, “Democratization and political tolerance in seventeen countries: A multi-level model of democratic learning.” Political Research Quarterly (2003) 56: 243–257. Ibid. Ibid.; also see Chapter 5. Spain, for instance, does not follow the general pattern. First, both dimensions of citizenship are negatively related to tolerance in Spain. On further examination, I found that the general dimensions of citizenship are not configured in the same way among the Spanish sample, which may explain some of the divergence. Alan Wolfe, Does American Democracy Still Work? New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006; Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. New York: Norton, 2003; Stephen Craig, The Malevolent Leaders: Popular Discontent in America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993; E.J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991; John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward American Political Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Joseph Nye, Philip Zelikow, and David King, eds., Why Americans Mistrust Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Associated Press, May 4, 1999. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture; also see Lipset, The First New Nation. Russell Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Similarly, social rights are positively related to engaged citizenship (r=.26) and citizen duty (r=.17). In separate analyses replicating those in Figure 7.2, citizen duty is more strongly related to trust in government (r=.17) than is engaged citizenship (r=.10). This implies that changing citizenship norms are increasing the percentage of critical citizens who are dissatisfied with government but more committed to democratic values. Jean-Francois Revel provides a very sympathetic view of the American political culture from a European perspective, while also citing the critical European literature: Anti-Americanism. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000.


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35. Stuart Weir and David Beetham, Political Power and Democratic Control in Britain: The Democratic Audit of the United Kingdom. London: Routledge, 2000.


CHAPTER

7

DIVISIONS IN AMERICAN POLITICS BY MARK D. BREWER AND JEFFREY M. STONECASH

Excerpted from Mark D. Brewer, Jeffrey M. Stonecash, SPLIT: CLASS AND CULTURAL DIVIDES IN AMERICAN POLITICS (Washington: DC, CQ Press, 2007), pp. 1-22.



CHAPTER

1 DIVISIONS IN AMERICAN POLITICS

nderstanding American politics—why Democratic and Republican politicians take certain positions and oppose each other’s policies— requires knowing what issues dominate political debate and how the electoral bases of the parties differ. Who does each party represent and what are their concerns? What are the partisan arguments about? Figuring out these differences has not been easy in recent years. Politicians articulate very different views about what is central to our politics. During the 2004 campaign, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards shared the following story:

U

I grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina, a place called Robbins. My father, he worked in a mill all his life, and I can still remember vividly the men and women who worked in that mill with him. I can see them. Some of them had lint in their hair; some of them had grease on their faces. They worked hard, and they tried to put a little money away so that their kids and their grand-kids could have a better life.... My mother had a number of jobs. She worked at the post office so she and my father could have health care. She owned her own small business. She refinished furniture to help pay for my education. I have had such incredible opportunities in my life. I was blessed to be the first person in my family to go to college. I worked my way through, and I had opportunities beyond my wildest dreams. And at the heart of this campaign—your campaign, our campaign—is to 1


2

S P L I T: C L A S S A N D C U LT U R A L D I V I D E S I N A M E R I C A N P O L I T I C S

make sure that all Americans have exactly the same kind of opportunities that I had no matter where you live, no matter who your family is, no matter what the color of your skin is.... And we have much work to do, because the truth is, we still live in a country where there are two different Americas—one for all those people who have lived the American dream and don’t have to worry, and another for most Americans, everybody else who struggle to make ends meet every single day. It doesn’t have to be that way.1 To Edwards, the important divisions are class divisions. For a long time academics defined class in terms of socioeconomic status or in terms of how voters saw themselves. For the first approach, academics would devise combinations of income, education, and occupation, and then group the combinations into working class, lower-middle class, middle class, etc. The other approach was to ask survey respondents to identify themselves as middle or working class.2 Class as defined in this book refers not to the status of a person’s job, but that person’s income level. A family’s location within the income distribution is critically important in terms of both the options that are available to them and the economic fears and pressures they face. The less money a family has, the fewer opportunities and greater economic vulnerability it faces. Edwards identifies a crucial political battle over whether we will use our resources to protect the vulnerable and provide more equality of opportunity. To others, however, the real battle is about which values we should support. Pat Buchanan, former aide to President Nixon, past Republican presidential candidate, and current cable television commentator, places primary importance on cultural issues—what behaviors our society should value and what values our government should discourage or encourage: The agenda Clinton and Clinton would impose on America— abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat—that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America wants. It is not the kind of change America needs. And


DIVISIONS IN AMERICAN POLITICS

3

it is not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God’s country.... My friends, this election is about much more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton and Clinton are on the other side, and George Bush is on our side. And so, we have to come home, and stand beside him.3 Edwards asks how to increase equality of opportunity, how to treat individual initiative and accomplishment, and how much of our tax resources should be used to help the less affluent. Buchanan asks what values should our society support, what behaviors should government allow or prohibit, and proper definitions of right and wrong. It’s not easy to sort out which of these divisions dominates politics. Some assert class divisions are important while others assert that cultural issues are dominant. Still others argue that the central concern is not whether class or cultural issues dominate, but whether cultural issues have displaced class issues. Finally, some say there really is no “culture war” 4 within the public, but rather only the elites in Washington are divided and caught up in an “inside-the-beltway” debate over morality. Sorting out the divisions—which groups support Democrats and which support Republicans and why—is central to understanding American politics. Politics is fundamentally a fight over resources and values,5 and we can’t understand what the fight is about if we don’t know who is on each side and what motivates them. If Republicans receive strong support from the more affluent and little support from the less well-off, the party will be a strong advocate for lower taxes and fewer government services, particularly services that benefit the less affluent. If Democrats derive much of their support from the less affluent, they will oppose Republican efforts to cut taxes and government programs, and instead call for increased taxation (particularly on the wealthy) in order to fund programs focused on improving the situation of America’s economic have-nots.


4


But the basis of partisan conflict could be very different. If Republicans express their opposition to abortion and receive strong support from pro-life individuals and groups, while Democrats advocate for the right of women to decide about abortions and receive support from those who regard themselves as pro-choice, a different set of policy battles will occur. Republicans will seek to restrain the right to choose, require parental notification for minors seeking abortions, and oppose the use of public funds to pay for abortions. Democrats will oppose these policies. In this situation, public policy on abortion in the United States will be dramatically different based on which party gains control of government.6 Understanding what set of issues, if any, are dividing the public and the parties will help us comprehend what motivates politicians to act the way they do. We will understand why some issues dominate the political agenda while others are ignored, what future policy fights might be about, and ultimately what the laws of the nation might look like. The problem for students of politics is that contemporary interpretations of current American politics present very divergent explanations of the divisions dominating the process. The basis of these differences will be presented in later chapters, but a brief summary here may help. THE CENTRAL ISSUES—CLASS AND CULTURE

Those who see class as primary argue that America gives high priority to the American Dream—defined by Jennifer Hochschild as “the promise that all Americans have the chance to achieve success as they define it ... through their own efforts”—and that the central issues of equality of opportunity divide the public politically.7 On one side of the class divide are those who see differences in opportunity and advocate using the power of government to increase equality of opportunity, such as providing federal aid to equalize expenditures across school districts, health care for children whose parents do not have it, and more accessible childcare for lower income workers. The advocates of equal opportunity want to provide college grants that do not require repayment rather than loans that create debt for less-affluent students, more generous unemployment and retraining benefits for workers who lose their jobs, and financial assistance for families that have difficulty making ends meet.



5

Those on the other side of the equality of opportunity debate put much more emphasis on rewarding individual initiative and accomplishments and less emphasis on redistributive efforts. They believe that all Americans have the opportunity to succeed, and that differences in economic success reflect discrepancies in talent, hard work, and perseverance. They oppose higher tax rates for those who are the most successful because they do not think those who have succeeded should be forced to subsidize those not doing as well. They want any federal programs that do exist to focus more on encouraging individual responsibility and initiative, and less on what they see as government hand-outs to the undeserving. Cultural issues are rooted in different concerns, involving questions of what values and accompanying behavioral practices should be encouraged in society. Money and opportunity are far less central to these disputes over cultural issues, which are focused on what role government should play in identifying, encouraging, and in some cases enforcing appropriate personal practices. Those on the conservative side of this divide believe strongly that there are proper ways for people to behave and that government should seek to support and enforce such behaviors. Abortion is murder and should not be allowed; homosexuality is wrong and should not be condoned and protected by law. Pornography is immoral and dangerous and, therefore, should be banned. Government should actively seek to support those practices valued by society. For example, marriage between a man and woman is a good thing and, thus, divorce should be more difficult to obtain; religion is highly beneficial to society and, therefore, religious organizations should find it easier to become involved in government and public life. Perhaps most important of all, supporting the institution of the family should always be the government’s first priority. In contrast, those on the liberal side of this cleavage think government should simply provide freedom for individuals to pursue their own preferred lifestyles, without judging those practices. The decision to have an abortion should be left to women without government involvement. The decision to view obscenity and pornography should be left to adults without government interference. Gays should have the same rights as others in society, and single individuals should enjoy the same benefits


6


and priority as families. Church and state should be strictly separated. In short, the government should provide a wide berth to individual choice in the area of personal behavior. Each of these sets of issues creates politics with very different conflicts, policy proposals, debates, and in the end very different policies and laws. Disputes about class and equality of opportunity create conflicts over the sources and levels of taxation; the design, recipients, and types of government programs; and the extent and nature of benefits provided. Cultural issues create conflicts over what role government should play in personal lives, what role religion should play in government, and what values and behaviors the state—through its coercive power—should encourage or discourage, allow or prohibit. What we are fighting about depends on which set of issues is dominant. WHY INTERPRETATIONS MATTER

Whether class concerns or cultural issues dominate American politics is an important question. Understanding which set of issues is primary is crucial for politicians, the press, interest groups, and ultimately the public. Politicians who want to keep their jobs try to understand what motivates the public when it comes to politics. If they believe that the public is motivated by class issues, then elected officials will worry about the class composition of their district and consider how policy on class-related issues affects their electoral base. A member of the House of Representatives from a middle-class district who thinks that her constituents resent tax cuts for the affluent will worry about how a vote for such tax cuts will affect her reelection chances. But if she is convinced that her district is inflamed over abortion and gay rights, she may vote as she wishes on tax cuts and worry more about her positions on cultural issues. This congresswoman’s behavior is determined by her sense of what motivates the public at the polls. Once elections are over, politicians review election results and form judgments about what got them votes from specific groups and areas. If politicians think issues of class or culture are dominant, and they won by stressing their commitments to one of these, they can then claim a mandate to pursue and enact certain policies. The press also weighs class versus culture when it decides which events are important, what should receive priority in coverage, and how



7

explanations should be framed. The media in the United States are a forprofit enterprise, and the larger the audience an outlet achieves the more money it makes. One way to attract a large audience is to present people with information they deem to be interesting and important. The news media are continuously focusing on what voters care about and what motivates them to vote Democratic or Republican. Should the media cover claims about class-specific tax cuts or should they devote attention and resources to culture war conflicts, such as school prayer or gay marriage? Interest groups, particularly those on one side or another of the class and cultural divide, are also searching for the most important issues. The concerns driving American politics affect goals and tactics, and ultimately the success or failure of these groups within the policy arena. Labor unions, long-standing central actors on class issues, are trying to understand if anyone cares about tax cuts and the increase in the numbers of workers without health insurance. The unions must decide if calling attention to such issues will be effective, or if greater public concern about illegitimate births, abortion, and gay rights issues makes such class-based debates unlikely to get on the agenda. Conversely, groups supporting cultural conservatism must determine if the public cares about their causes, and more specifically which issues will mobilize the public to act politically in such a way that will support a conservative cultural agenda. Is the public more likely to respond to sex in the media, gay teachers in public schools, or some other issue? The same types of concerns of course apply to groups advocating for socially liberal causes or for policies benefiting the affluent. Each issue advocate, no matter which side it takes, must understand what concerns the public, how best to appeal to the masses and to public officials, and in the end what will move election outcomes and public policy formation. Ultimately, understanding what shapes American politics matters to the American public. If politicians misinterpret what concerns voters and mistakenly claim mandates for certain policies, voters do not get a responsive government. If the press misunderstands what concerns voters, it doesn’t cover topics that matter to people. If the media, interest groups, and politicians misperceive public preferences, the public doesn’t get the policies it wants. In the end, a proper understanding of what drives American politics is crucial for a properly functioning representative democracy.


8


THE PUZZLING STATE OF INTERPRETATIONS

Despite the fact that interpretations are central to understanding, it would be easy to become confused about what currently shapes American politics. We have two common and dramatically different interpretations with regard to class and culture, and it is difficult to know if accepting one interpretation means rejecting the other or whether both might be accepted. One view is that class divisions have declined in relevance and have been replaced by passionate division over cultural issues. The contrasting view is that class issues are rising in importance and are forcing all other issues to play a secondary role at best in structuring political conflict. There are, of course, also the possibilities that both class and cultural issues are relevant sources of division, with neither displacing the other, or that neither class nor cultural issues matter in American politics. Which are we to believe? Some brief background on these interpretations will help us understand what is shaping current American political divisions. The Great Depression and Class Divisions

The “decline of class” argument has become a widely stated view of American politics. But how did class concerns come to dominate in the first place? The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression set the stage for social class to structure American politics. During the Depression, unemployment reached 25 percent nationally and higher in some areas, both bank foreclosures and failures were common, and poverty and suffering became commonplace.8 Herbert Hoover, the unfortunate Republican president in office at the onset of the Depression, chose to do nothing since federal government involvement in the economy went against the laissez faire principles of the Republican Party. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1932, did not share this disinclination for government activism and promised Americans a “New Deal” using the power of the national government to tackle the economic situation. Whether based on fear or agreement with his policies, the American public voted overwhelmingly for FDR in 1932.9 Roosevelt’s successful coalition consisted of Northern urban ethnic groups, union members, the working class, blacks migrants from the



9

South, and white Southerners from all classes. Most of these groups were the have-nots in American society, and thus the New Deal coalition was seen as class-based or as relying heavily on less affluent voters.10 This collection of have-nots elected Roosevelt three more times, and remained largely intact as the dominant power in American electoral politics through the 1960s. And the coalition did not just win elections—it produced policy results. It provided the basis for legislation during the 1930s that, among other accomplishments, created Social Security, unemployment compensation, multiple public works programs, and laws to improve the situation of labor, such as guaranteeing the right to strike and to bargain collectively.11 In the first half of the 1960s the New Deal coalition was still going strong, electing Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson as president, and either creating or increasing funding for programs such as AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), food stamps, Medicaid (health insurance for the poor), Medicare (health insurance for the elderly), public housing funding, and federal aid for low income schools.12 The Great Depression and the widespread poverty it created gave birth to the New Deal coalition. Economic conditions change, however, and there was considerable evidence by the 1960s that such changes were making class a less relevant basis for political divisions. From the late 1940s through the 1960s everyone seemed to become better off as incomes generally increased and inequality among classes declined.13 The general increase in affluence after World War II appeared to reduce material conflicts within American society.14 These changes led to the emergence of the decline-of-class interpretation as researchers reported that class-based political divisions were steadily declining.15 Race Eclipses Class?

As class seemed to decline in importance, there was a sense that new issues were emerging, dividing the electorate along different lines. These newer issues, involving race and cultural concerns, were seen as fundamentally different and powerful enough to displace the economic issues that solidified the New Deal coalition. Race emerged first as a great “transforming issue” in American politics.16 The civil rights movement of the 1960s made Americans acutely aware of the racial injustice present


10


in their country, and placed the issue of racial equality on the national agenda. Southern blacks had largely been prevented from registering to vote—much less actually voting— ever since the institution of the postReconstruction Jim Crow laws, a situation which changed with the enactment of civil rights laws in the mid-1960s. Among other things, the policy victories of the civil rights activists meant that many more African Americans were suddenly on the registration rolls in the South. As Southern blacks began to vote, they gained electoral importance they had not previously possessed.17 The vast majority of these newly enfranchised African Americans threw their support behind the Democratic Party, due in large part to 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s vehement opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and support of states’ rights in general. This increase in the support of blacks for the Democrats had significant effects on the party. The party became more responsive to their concerns and passed several civil rights laws during the Johnson Administration. The increased presence of African Americans within the party also expanded the Democrats’ liberal base. But events in the larger society involving blacks also created problems for the party. When the 1960s began, blacks were largely seen as sympathetic figures, having borne the brunt of past discrimination. However, numerous urban riots involving mostly African Americans during the latter half of the1960s generated a good deal of unease and anger among many whites.18 The riots were soon followed by charges that too many blacks were on welfare. Some whites argued that welfare and redistribution programs were largely benefiting undeserving blacks.19 There were complaints that the Democratic Party leaders, largely affluent and untouched by crime and racial integration issues, were more sympathetic to blacks than to the white working class that had been the party’s traditional backbone of support, and that they were willing to tolerate questionable behaviors so as not to alienate their newly acquired black constituency.20 The result, at least according to some, was the beginning of a political division revolving around race, the alienation of the white working class, and the demise of class discussions in American politics.21



11

Displacing Class Issues?

In short, greater affluence appeared to have reduced the relevance of class divisions and the race issue was dividing blacks and the white working class, pushing the latter away from the Democratic Party. The party had retained its affluent liberals, but lost much of its primary base. The result was an increasingly prevalent argument that the importance of class in American politics had significantly declined, and that racial issues were the hammer that smashed class-based politics. Indeed, many commentators argued that a reversal of the role of class had occurred: There has been an inversion of the old New Deal relationship of social class to the vote. In wide sectors of public policy, groups of high socioeconomic status are now more supportive of equalitarian (liberal) change than are the middle to lower socioeconomic cohorts (within white America); and as a result liberal (often, although not always, Democratic) candidates are finding higher measures of electoral sustenance at the top of the socioeconomic ladder than among the middle and lower rungs.22 Journalists, relying on the analyses of academics, advisors, and commentators, have come to treat these conclusions as accepted wisdom. In the 1990s and after it was common to read that class was no longer a driving force in American politics: The overlapping issues of race and taxes have permitted the Republican party to adapt the principles of conservatism to break the underlying class basis of the Roosevelt coalition.... [R]ace has become a powerful wedge, breaking up what had been the majoritarian economic interests of the poor, working and lower-middle classes in the traditional liberal coalition.... Working-class whites and corporate CEOs, once adversaries at the bargaining table, found common ideological ground in their shared hostility to expanding government intervention.23 ...[O]ne of the defining traits of American politics over the [last] 25 years has been the defection of working-class, white voters, especially men, from the Democratic Party.24


12


...[C]lass alignments in politics have become jumbled. In the 1950s, professionals were reliably Republican; today they lean Democratic. Meanwhile, skilled labor has gone from being heavily Democratic to almost evenly split.... Increasing affluence plays an important role. When there is not only a chicken, but an organic, free-range chicken, in every pot, the traditional economic appeal to the working class can sound off key.25 All of the above quotations point to the same conclusion: the class cleavage rooted in the New Deal was dead. The Emergence of Cultural Issues

While race-based issues seemed at first to have displaced class concerns from political primacy, it now appears that race-based issues have been replaced in recent years by a new set of non-economic disputes.26 This new set of issues, generally lumped together as “cultural” issues, involve a much broader group of questions and concerns. What values will be honored and recognized as legitimate within society? Which behaviors will be encouraged or allowed by government and which will be discouraged or banned? What is the proper interaction between religion and the government? What is the proper use of government power in dictating fundamental questions of right and wrong? Sometimes these issues are entangled with race, for example, when blacks are blamed for increases in crime and illegitimate births.27 But in most instances race-based issues are not prominent in the debates over cultural issues, at least not on the surface. Most of the time, the fundamental concern is about behaviors and practices that are seen as undermining traditional values. Questions of morality dominate, and in many ways all of the cultural debates boil down to the relatively simple question: “Are we as a society living the way that we should be?” Of course the simplest questions are often the most difficult to answer, and generate the most contentious and acrimonious discussions. Contention and acrimony are two words that can certainly be seen as accurately describing the politics surrounding cultural issues in contemporary America. The heated nature of this debate is more easily understood when one looks at the specific subjects that together make up the cultural issues



13

category. Opinions about abortion, homosexuality, and gay marriage all involve fundamental disputes about morality. Other cultural issues, such as sex and violence in the entertainment media, obscenity, and pornography, fall along similar lines. Other “life” issues such as embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia garner a good deal of attention. Prayer in public schools and other questions about the proper role of religion in government and public life are important for those concerned with cultural issues. Religious perspectives affect whether people support a curriculum with the theory of evolution or the possibility that intelligent design (God) created the universe. The place of women in American society is a rallying point in the culture debates and almost all of those on the conservative side of the cultural divide place the health of the American family as perhaps the biggest umbrella concern of all. Fundamentally the conflict comes down to a dispute over right and wrong. These cultural issues are, for the most part, relatively recent additions to the American political agenda. This does not mean that the issues themselves are new, or even that their importance to Americans is a recent development. What is true is that, with the exception of women’s rights, most of the issues included in the cultural debate were widely perceived as socially and politically settled for most of American history. It is only in the last forty to fifty years that these subjects have even become open for discussion in the policy process. Prior to the 1960s, it was taken as a given that prayer, most likely of a Christian variety, would be present in public schools. Before Roe v. Wade, a legal abortion was extremely difficult to obtain, and was available in only a few states. Well into the late twentieth century homosexuality was—and for many still is—somehow considered less than normal, if not outright wrong, mostly hidden from public view, and certainly not a legitimate candidate for state protection. Today, much of what we can view on television or hear on the radio, to say nothing of the material available on the Internet, simply would not have been available even ten years ago. Pick almost any cultural issue, except possibly the place of women in society, and it is quite likely that similar statements can be made. But the conditions indicated by such statements obviously no longer hold. A number of changes, including technological changes, political changes, and most important, societal changes, have brought cultural issues to the


14


forefront of the American public dialogue. Sociologist James Davison Hunter, was one of the first to link the cultural issues coming out of these societal changes to the political realm. “America is in the midst of a culture war that has and will continue to have reverberations not only within public policy, but within the lives of ordinary Americans everywhere.” 28 Labeling the two sides in the conflict orthodox and progressive,29 Hunter argued that the opposing groups were separated by dramatically different views of moral authority, and different views on what the “good” community should look like. For Hunter, these differences were now being played out in the context of American politics. “The nub of political disagreement today... can be traced ultimately and finally to the matter of moral authority. By moral authority I mean the basis by which people determine whether something is good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable, and so on.” 30 In Hunter’s view, the cultural issues that first appeared on the radar screen in the early 1960s were dominating American politics by the early 1990s. Displacing Class Issues (Again)

Much as with race, those who see cultural issues dominating American politics argue that these issues are dividing people along new lines, making class divisions less relevant, and appeals to class less effective in influencing voters. The issues agitating voters now are cultural in nature. Those who are pro-choice, tolerant or supportive of gays, and detached from religion are on one side of the dominant political cleavage, and opposed by those who are pro-life, opposed to homosexuality, and desire a larger place for religion in public life, including a more intimate relationship between church and state. As with race-based issues, the argument is that the working class is particularly troubled by the developments associated with cultural issues—the rising number of abortions, greater acceptance and protection of homosexuality, and so forth— and they are abandoning the Democrats because of the party’s willingness to accept and defend abortion and homosexuality. “I’m not happy with the moral issues at all with the Democrats. The Republicans will hurt me in the long run in providing for my family, but it’s probably more important to watch out for the unborn and that kind of stuff.” 31



15

People in both parties have attributed the shift [away from class issue] to the rise of social issues, like gun control and same-sex marriage, which have tilted many working-class voters rightward and upper-income voters toward the left. 32 The essence of this argument about the displacement of economic class as a dividing line is that conservatives have been able to redefine the substance of class divisions. “The Republicans have often managed to convince Joe that in America, class is not a question of money but of values.” 33 According to this view, class conflicts that were previously about opportunity and the distribution of income have been transformed into battles over lifestyle issues and the role of religion in day-to-day life. Conservatives have come along and made the case that cultural elites— usually residing in East and West coast urban centers —scorn the values of working and middle class America—usually populating the Southern and Midwest rural heartland. The cultural elites are described as secularists—discounting religion as a source of rules to live by—and relativists—holding there is no absolute truth— and not very respectful of those who are religious and who adhere to traditional values.34 The conservatives argue that working and middle-class Americans need to stand with the Republican Party which will advocate for the traditional lifestyles, beliefs, and values. One of the most popular books on politics in the past few years, Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? devotes a tad over 300 pages to the argument that less affluent Americans now regularly vote against their economic interests because of their views on cultural issues. According to Frank, the current conservatism “mobilizes voters with explosive social issues—summoning outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art—which it then marries to probusiness economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends.” 35 It is because these traditional values are presumed to be held more by working-class individuals that class divisions are diminished. 36 The common thread in these arguments is that culture now trumps class in American electoral politics. As confirmation of the new dominance of cultural issues, the National Election Pool’s national exit poll from the 2004 presidential election reported that 22 percent of all respondents chose “moral values” as the


16


most important issue in casting their vote, the highest percentage received by any category. Though this was the first time such a response option had been presented to voters and there was considerable dispute about what the category meant, political observers across the printed pages, airwaves, and cable/broadband connections of America seized on this as evidence that cultural issues were now dominant in American politics. Political commentators continue to regularly pronounce that cultural issues are at the heart of contemporary American politics and many of these same observers believe that the dominance of culture has resulted in class concerns being ignored. Some liberal analysts, frustrated that class issues get less attention than they think they should, have almost pleaded for Americans, particularly less affluent Americans and those who seek to advocate for them, to wake up and pay attention to class issues before it is too late. Consider the following excerpt from Paul Krugman, liberal opinion columnist for the New York Times and professor of economics at Princeton University: It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they’re willing to take it. First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families. And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions ... that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.37 Much Ado about Nothing: The “Myth” of a Culture War

Finally, as if sorting out arguments surrounding the respective roles of class and cultural issues, and the relationship between them, is not



17

enough of a puzzle for those attempting to make sense of American politics, an argument has recently emerged that the relevance of all these disputes for the American public has been overblown. In a book that has garnered as much if not more attention than Frank’s portrait of a culturally-based duping of the American working class, political scientist Morris Fiorina and his colleagues argue that talk of a culture war in America is bunkum: The simple truth is that there is no culture war in the United States—no battle for the soul of America rages, at least none that most Americans are aware of. Many of the activists in the political parties and the various cause groups do, in fact, hate each other and regard themselves as combatants in a war. But their hatreds and battles are not shared by the great mass of the American people. There is little evidence that Americans’ ideological or policy positions are more polarized today than they were two or three decades ago, although their choices often seem to be. The explanation is that the political figures Americans evaluate are more polarized. A polarized political class makes the citizenry appear polarized, but it is only that—an appearance.38 Fiorina and his coauthors ask if states won by Bush (red) or Kerry (blue) differ, and come away skeptical that there are large differences. They ask whether Americans have changed their opinions about issues like whether abortion should be allowed, and find little change. They conclude the presence of a cultural war is overrated and their arguments add further confusion to the question of what divisions are shaping political debates. Those looking for answers as to what is driving American politics are often left scratching their heads in uncertainty. THE CONCERNS AND PLAN OF THE BOOK

To sort out these various claims, then, we need to address several issues. Is class relevant as a source of divisions in American politics, and has it declined in relevance? Have cultural issues emerged as a source of political divisions? If so, has their emergence suppressed the extent of class


18


divisions? Are divisions over class and culture confined only to elites or do they exist within the public and do they affect the political behavior of the public? Our analysis will demonstrate that there is considerable evidence that class still matters in American politics. A number of studies show that the dominant images of the parties held by the public are economic in nature. When the American public thinks about the Republicans and the Democrats, they are—as they have been since 1952—most likely to think about them in terms of how they benefit the haves and the have-nots in society.39 There is also evidence that class differences remain an important factor when it comes to party identification and vote choice in the United States. Looking at party identification and voting in presidential and House elections, Jeffrey Stonecash found that rather than fading over the last twenty years, class divisions in electoral politics have increased and play a significant role in the partisan behavior of voters.40 Further, class divisions have the potential to continue to increase as inequality in the distribution of income and wealth in the nation continues to grow at a rapid pace.41 In addition, the same 2004 exit poll cited earlier for the importance of cultural issues also presented results that suggest the need to reconsider the decline-of-class view of American politics. Table 1-1 presents some results from that poll. While 22 percent chose moral values as the most important issue, 32 percent chose bread and butter opportunity issues such as the economy, health care, and education. While Republican George W. Bush won handily among the moral issues voters, Democrat John Kerry won easily among those voters who chose the more classrelated issues as most important. As the table also shows, the division in vote by family income is significant, and as we will indicate later, it is by no means a fluke. Indeed, this division has been gradually growing over the last several decades. The recent economic experience of voters also has a powerful effect, with those who see themselves as better off voting strongly for Bush and those who see themselves as worse off voting strongly for Kerry. In short, while many argue that class and issues of equality of opportunity are of declining importance in American politics, a good deal of evidence seems to indicate otherwise.



TABLE 1-1

Dissecting the 2004 Presidential Election

SURVEY QUESTION

Percentage with Vote Choice of: Bush Kerry

Most important issue Economy / jobs (20%)

18

80

Health care (8%)

23

77

Education (4%)

26

73

Iraq (15%)

26

73

Taxes (5%)

57

43

Moral values (22%)

80

18

Terrorism (19%)

86

14

Under $15,000 (8%)

36

63

$15–30,000 (15%)

42

57

$30–50,000 (22%)

49

50

$50–75,000 (23%)

56

43

$75 –100,000 (14%)

55

45

$100–150,000 (11%)

57

42

$150–200,000 (4%)

58

42

$200,000 plus (3%)

63

35

Better (32%)

80

19

Same (39%)

49

50

Worse (28%)

20

79

Family income

Family financial situation

Note: Percentages next to each response are the percentages of all respondents offering that response, (i.e., 20 percent indicated the economy/jobs is the most important issue). Sources: Data are taken from the national exit poll conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool (a consortium of ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, FOX News, and NBC News), as reported by CNN at www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/ pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html.


19

20


Our emphasis on the continuing relevance of class does not mean that cultural issues don’t matter. Quite to the contrary, there is also considerable evidence that cultural issues have become more important in affecting political behavior. Conflict over subjects like abortion and homosexuality is very real and increasingly influential in American politics. Cultural issues are important; yet so too are class concerns. Evidence indicates that both cultural issues and class issues are important in American politics, and both sets of issues are in play simultaneously. For example, in 2001 and again in 2003 President Bush and Congress—with mostly Republican support—enacted large tax cuts. Liberals and Democrats criticized these cuts as benefiting the rich, while Republicans disparaged talk of “class warfare” and argued that taxes were too high and lower taxes would stimulate the economy. At the same time the tax-cut discussions were raging, many officials on both side of the partisan aisle were arguing strenuously about cultural issues such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage, giving the impression that these issues are what really matters, both to political elites and to the average American citizen. OUR PLAN

We seek to explain the development of both class and cultural issues in American politics. For each set of issues we will review the social trends making it a concern, the response of the parties, and then the response of voters. Our focus on the issues of class and culture does not mean that we think that these are the only subjects that matter in contemporary American politics. Additional concerns—such as national security, energy dependence, and foreign policy—are clearly high salience issues. On the domestic front another such prominent concern is race, which is of course in many ways intimately connected to the class and cultural concerns we spotlight. For example, it is impossible to fully understand economic inequality in the United States without accounting for the effects of racial and ethnic discrimination.42 Similarly, any explanation of the decline of the Democratic party in the South and the realignment of evangelical Protestants that fails to include race would be incomplete. So race is important and clearly tied up with many of the phenomena and developments that we discuss throughout this book. Because we cannot be encyclopedic, however, race will not be a central focus. Class concerns and cultural issues—their respective impacts on American politics and



21

their relationship with one another—are what this book is about, and therefore will occupy center stage. Both class concerns and cultural issues have an interesting and lengthy history over the last several decades. Our first focus is a brief explanation of the history of class concerns and cultural issues over the last few decades and what social trends brought them to the forefront. Then we examine how the parties made these issues more prominent—through the role of politicians, public comments, legislative proposals, party platforms, and votes in Congress. Finally, the voters, especially their responses and party alignments, are crucial to making issues a source of political division. If politicians clamor about the unfairness of tax cuts or the impropriety of same-sex marriage and voters with differing views do not align themselves with the opposite parties, the issue is unlikely to become a source of division. It is only when those opposed to tax cuts support Democrats and those opposed to same-sex marriage support Republicans that an issue becomes a source of political division. We look at how broad issues of class and culture have become sources of political division. We then move to the relationship between these two sets of issues. Many of those who presume that class divisions have declined in relevance and have been replaced by cultural issues also presume that one displaces the other. The basis of this conclusion is the presumption that the working class is more religious and less tolerant of abortion, homosexuality, and more diverse roles for women. Drawing upon theories of the authoritarian personality type from the 1950s, it was widely presumed that working class voters were uncomfortable with and resistant to social change.43 Theorists presume that Republican appeals to the working class voters about abortion, gay rights, and religion in society overwhelm their concerns about opportunity in America and pull them away from concerns about the fairness of tax cuts, lack of health care, reduced enforcement of worker safety rules, limited grants for their children to attend college, and weakened rules about protection of their pensions. As the truck driver quoted on page 14 stated, “The Republicans will hurt me in the long run in providing for my family, but it’s probably more important to watch out for the unborn and that kind of stuff.” The second major concern, then, of this book is whether class concerns are actually being swamped by cultural issues. We explore the relationship between the class and cultural issues and ask whether cultural


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issues are really displacing or suppressing class issues. There is strong evidence that displacement does not occur and that both sources of division coexist in American politics. Any explanation focusing on one and excluding the other interpretation of contemporary American politics is incomplete and inaccurate, therefore, both class and culture are crucial for understanding the current American polity. The question of class versus culture is not merely an academic exercise. Which explanation is accepted as accurate will have real consequences in American society, since competing interpretations filter through commentators and journalists to average Americans, and become feedback about our reality. The accepted interpretations tell us what matters within our society and what the public cares about. Is same-sex marriage more important than who bears the tax burden? Is access to health care more relevant than abortion? The accepted interpretations tell us what issues are likely to dominate the political agenda and what politicians are likely to argue about. What the politics of the future—at least the near future—will be about depends, at least in part, on the interpretations of what is most important in American politics right now.


ENDNOTES

CHAPTER ONE 1. Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.), accepting the Democratic nomination for vice president of the United States at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, July 29, 2004. A transcript of Edwards’ speech is available at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A222302004Jul28.html. 2. For a discussion of the limits of those approaches, relative to income, see Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Class and Party in American Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), chapter 7. 3. Patrick J. Buchanan, endorsing George H.W. Bush as the Republican nominee for president of the United States at the Republican National Convention in Houston, TX, August 17, 1992. A transcript of Buchanan’s speech is available at www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0817-rnc.html 4. Morris P. Fiorina, with Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2005). 5. E.E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960). 6. This of course ignores the role of courts in the policy-making process, although one could certainly argue that partisanship has become increasingly important in judicial matters, particularly in the area of appointment and confirmation. 7. Jennifer L. Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), xvii. 8. For an overview of economic conditions during the Great Depression, see James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle against Poverty in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 37–54. 9. William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity 1914–1932 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). 10. Carl N. Degler, “American Political Parties and the Rise of the City: An Interpretation,” Journal of American History 51 (June 1964): 41–59; Samuel J. Endersveld, “The Influence of Metropolitan Party Pluralities in Presidential Elections Since 1920: A Study of Twelve Key Cities,” American Political Science Review 43 (December 1949): 1189–1206; Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., with Charles D. Hadley, Transformations of the American Party System (New York: Norton, 1975); Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 2d ed., rev. ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956); James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1983); and Julius Turner and Edward V. Schneier, Party and Constituency: Pressures on Congress, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970). 11. John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and David Brody, eds., The New Deal: The National Level (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975); William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963); Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959); and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960). 12. Sar A. Levitan and Robert Taggart, “The Great Society Did Succeed,” Political Science Quarterly 91 (Winter 1976–1977): 601–618; and James L. Sundquist, Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1968). 13. Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottschalk, America Unequal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 53. 14. Ronald Inglehart, “The Silent Revolution in Europe,” American Political Science Review 65 (December 1971): 991–1017; Ladd with Hadley, Transformations of the American Party System, 195–200.

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15. Paul R. Abramson, “Generational Change in American Electoral Behavior,” American Political Science Review 68 (March 1974): 93–105; Ladd with Hadley, Transformations of the American Political System, 73 and 233–239; Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., “The Shifting Party Coalitions- 1932–1976,” in Emerging Coalitions in American Politics, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1978), 81–121; Everett Carll Ladd Jr., “Like Waiting for Godot,” in The End of Realignment, ed. Byron E. Shafer (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1991), 24–36; William J. Keefe, Parties, Politics and Public Policy in America (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1994), 214; and Paul R. Abramson, John H. Aldrich, and David W. Rohde, Change and Continuity in the 1992 Elections (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1995), 146 and 152–153. 16. Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 14. 17. Harold W. Stanley, Voter Mobilization and the Politics of Race: The South and Universal Suffrage (New York: Praeger, 1987); and Richard J. Timpone, “Mass Mobilization or Government Intervention? The Growth of Black Registration in the South,” Journal of Politics 57 (May 1995): 425–442. 18. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (New York: Penguin, 2004). 19. Martin Gilens, “Racial Attitudes and Opposition Welfare,” Journal of Politics 57 (November 1995): 994–1014; and Martin Gilens, “Race Coding and White Opposition to Welfare,” Journal of Politics 90 (September 1996): 593–604. 20. For an excellent discussion of the overall dynamics surrounding the racial issues, the parties, and voting behavior, see Carmines and Stimson, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. 21. Editorial, New York Times, “Does Race Doom the Democrats?” November 20, 1988, A25; Michael Oreskes, “In Racial Politics, Democrats Losing More than Elections,” New York Times, November 20, 1988, sec. 4, 1; Wilson C. McWilliams, “The Meaning of the Election,” in The Election of 1996: Reports and Interpretations, ed. Gerald M. Pomper, et al. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1991), 241–272; and Michael Goldfeld, The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: The New Press, 1997). 22. Ladd with Hadley, Transformations of the American Party System, 27. 23. Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, “Race,” Atlantic Monthly (May 1991): 53–86. 24. Elizabeth Kohlbert and Adam Clymer. “The Politics of Layoffs: In Search of a Message,” New York Times, March 6, 1996, A23. 25. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt, “Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide,” New York Times, May 15, 2005, A27. 26. Many would disagree with these views, and argue that views on racial issues still play a very important role in American politics. For some recent examples of such an argument, see Vincent L. Hutchings and Nicholas A. Valentino, “The Centrality of Race in American Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 7 (2004): 383–408; David C. Leege, Kenneth D. Wald, Brian S. Krueger, and Paul D. Mueller, The Politics of Cultural Differences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, “The Conceptualization and Measurement of Symbolic Racism,” Journal of Politics 67 (August 2005): 731–761; and Nicholas A. Valentino and David O. Sears, “Old Times Are Not Forgotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary South,” American Journal of Political Science 49 (July 2005): 672–688. 27. Edsall and Edsall, “Race”; and Nicol C. Rae, “Class and Culture: American Political Cleavages in the Twentieth Century,” Western Political Quarterly 45 (September 1992): 629–650. 28. James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 34. See also James Davison Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War (New York: The Free Press, 1994). 29. Hunter defines “orthodox” in the following manner: “The commitment on the part of adherents to an external, definable, and transcendent authority. Such objective and transcendent authority defines, at least in the abstract, a consistent, unchangeable measure of value, purpose, goodness, and identity, both personal and collective. It tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are” (Hunter, Culture Wars, 44). In contrast, for progressivism, “moral authority tends to be defined by the spirit of the modern age, a spirit of rationalism and subjectivism.” Progressivism is marked by “the tendency to resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life.... Binding moral authority tends to reside in personal experience or scientific


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30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42.

43.

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rationality, or either of these in conversation with particular religious or cultural traditions,” (Hunter, Culture Wars, 44–45). Hunter, Culture Wars, 42. This comment comes from a truck driver in Missouri during the 2004 presidential election campaign. Diane Cardwell, “For Many in Missouri, Values Outweigh Policy,” New York Times, September 19, 2004, A25. Scott and Leonhardt, “Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide.” John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (New York: Penguin, 2004), 236. For an interesting discussion of this development, see E.J. Dionne, Jr., “What Kind of Hater Are You?” Washington Post, March 15, 2006, A19. Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004), 5. As Frank puts it: “[T]hose parts of Johnson City [Kansas] with the lowest per capita income and lowest median housing values consistently generated the strongest support for the conservative faction. The more working class an area is, the more likely it is to be conservative.” Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas, 105. Paul Krugman, “Bush’s Class-War Budget,” New York Times, February 11, 2005, A25 Fiorina, with Abrams and Pope, Culture War, 5. Donald C. Baumer and Howard J. Gold, “Party Images and the American Electorate,” American Politics Quarterly 23 (January 1995): 33–61; Donald C. Baumer and Howard J. Gold, “Party Images after the Clinton Years,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the New England Political Science Association, Portland, ME, 2002; Mark D. Brewer, “A Divided Public? Party Images and Polarization in the United States,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, 2002; John G. Geer, “The Electorate’s Partisan Evaluations: Evidence of a Continuing Democratic Edge,” Public Opinion Quarterly 55 (Summer 1991): 218–231; Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler, Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); and Arthur Sanders, “The Meaning of Party Images,”Western Political Quarterly 41 (September 1988): 583–599. Stonecash, Class and Party in American Politics. Sheldon Ganzinger and Peter Gottschalk, America Unequal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); and Isaac Shapiro, Robert Greenstein, and Wendell Primus, “Pathbreaking CBO Study Shows Dramatic Increases in Income Disparities in 1980s and 1990s” (Center on Budget and Politics Priorities, May 31, 2001). For a recent analysis of racial differences in income and wealth, see Jared Bernstein, “Minority Wealth Gap: Net Worth Gap Twice That of Income,” Economic Policy Institute, March 15, 2006. Available at www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060315. Theodor W. Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1950); and Daniel Bell, ed., The Radical Right, rev. ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964).



CHAPTER

8

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE'S "PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES" BY RANDALL E. ADKINS




12 $ Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Parties in the United States”* !

(1835) 1. How did de Tocqueville portray the roles of majority and minority political parties in the United States? Was his depiction accurate for the time? 2. How do the political parties de Tocqueville observed differ from political parties found in the United States today?

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isitors from other countries have often highlighted important aspects of American culture and society that even Americans themselves have not noticed. After traveling to the United States, many foreign dignitaries have returned to their native land to write down their impressions of American culture, but none has proven as perceptive or as enduring as that of Alexis de Tocqueville. In 1832, de Tocqueville and his fellow magistrate, Gustave de Beaumont, were sent to the United States by the French government to study the young nation’s prison system. After traveling the country for nine months and conducting interviews with more than two hundred people on the topics of law, politics, and social practices, they returned to France to submit their report. Even before they left France, both de Tocqueville and Beaumont had decided to spend most of their time observing politics in the United States. During his travels de Tocqueville became so fascinated with the dedication of the public to the political process that he decided to write down his observations in a book, De la démocratie en Amérique. In preparing the manuscript de Tocqueville drew on the journals he kept during his trip, as well as hundreds of books and other documents that he collected in both the United States and France. Democracy in America was published in two volumes. The first was published in Paris on January 23, 1835. De Tocqueville began work on the second volume in the *http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/1_ch10.htm

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Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Parties in the United States”

fall of 1835, but his political career kept him from completing it as soon as he had expected. It was finally published on April 20, 1840. Democracy in America was immediately successful in both the United States and Europe. Numerous editions were published in the nineteenth century, and by the early twentieth century it was considered a classic work in the field of political science. Given that the United States was such a new nation, most Europeans had only a vague idea of how the American political system worked. De Tocqueville introduced the Old World to the political order of the New World. In the early 1830s the country was undergoing radical economic, geographic, and political transformations. As the economy expanded rapidly and grew more diverse, the country expanded westward. Democrat Andrew Jackson was the newly elected president. His election to that office in 1828 set off the transformation of political parties from local organizations dominated by political elites to mass membership organizations devoted to electing candidates to office at the federal, state, and local levels. Due to the success of Democracy in America de Tocqueville was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1837. The next year he was elected to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, and in 1841 he was elected to the Académie française.

A great distinction must be made between parties. Some countries are so large that the different populations which inhabit them, although united under the same government, have contradictory interests, and they may consequently be in a perpetual state of opposition. In this case the different fractions of the people may more properly be considered as distinct nations than as mere parties; and if a civil war breaks out, the struggle is carried on by rival states rather than by factions in the same state. But when the citizens entertain different opinions upon subjects which affect the whole country alike, such, for instance, as the principles upon which the government is to be conducted, then distinctions arise that may correctly be styled parties. Parties are a necessary evil in free governments; but they have not at all times the same character and the same propensities. The political parties that I style great are those which cling to principles rather than to their consequences; to general and not to special cases; to ideas and not to men. These parties are usually distinguished by nobler features,



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more generous passions, more genuine convictions, and a more bold and open conduct than the others. In them private interest, which always plays the chief part in political passions, is more studiously veiled under the pretext of the public good; and it may even be sometimes concealed from the eyes of the very persons whom it excites and impels. Minor parties, on the other hand, are generally deficient in political good faith. As they are not sustained or dignified by lofty purposes, they ostensibly display the selfishness of their character in their actions. They glow with a factitious zeal; their language is vehement, but their conduct is timid and irresolute. The means which they employ are as wretched as the end at which they aim. Hence it happens that when a calm state succeeds a violent revolution, great men seem suddenly to disappear and the powers of the human mind to lie concealed. Society is convulsed by great parties, it is only agitated by minor ones; it is torn by the former, by the latter it is degraded; and if the first sometimes save it by a salutary perturbation, the last invariably disturb it to no good end. America has had great parties, but has them no longer; and if her happiness is thereby considerably increased, her morality has suffered. When the War of Independence was terminated and the foundations of the new government were to be laid down, the nation was divided between two opinions—two opinions which are as old as the world and which are perpetually to be met with, under different forms and various names, in all free communities, the one tending to limit, the other to extend indefinitely, the power of the people. The conflict between these two opinions never assumed that degree of violence in America which it has frequently displayed elsewhere. Both parties of the Americans were agreed upon the most essential points; and neither of them had to destroy an old constitution or to overthrow the structure of society in order to triumph. In neither of them, consequently, were a great number of private interests affected by success or defeat: but moral principles of a high order, such as the love of equality and of independence, were concerned in the struggle, and these sufficed to kindle violent passions. The party that desired to limit the power of the people, endeavored to apply its doctrines more especially to the Constitution of the Union, whence it derived its name of Federal. The other party, which affected to be exclusively attached to the cause of liberty, took that of Republican. America is the land of democracy, and the Federalists, therefore, were always in a minority; but they reckoned on their side almost all the great men whom the War of Independence had produced, and their moral power was very considerable. Their cause, moreover, was favored by circumstances. The ruin of the first Confederation had impressed the people with a dread of anarchy, and the Federalists profited


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by this transient disposition of the multitude. For ten or twelve years, they were at the head of affairs, and they were able to apply some, though not all, of their principles; for the hostile current was becoming from day to day too violent to be checked. In 1801 the Republicans got possession of the government: Thomas Jefferson was elected President; and he increased the influence of their party by the weight of his great name, the brilliance of his talents, and his immense popularity. The means by which the Federalists had maintained their position were artificial, and their resources were temporary; it was by the virtues or the talents of their leaders, as well as by fortunate circumstances, that they had risen to power. When the Republicans attained that station in their turn, their opponents were overwhelmed by utter defeat. An immense majority declared itself against the retiring party, and the Federalists found themselves in so small a minority that they at once despaired of future success. From that moment the Republican or Democratic Party has proceeded from conquest to conquest, until it has acquired absolute supremacy in the country. The Federalists, perceiving that they were vanquished, without resource, and isolated in the midst of the nation, fell into two divisions, of which one joined the victorious Republicans, and the other laid down their banners and changed their name. Many years have elapsed since they wholly ceased to exist as a party. The accession of the Federalists to power was, in my opinion, one of the most fortunate incidents that accompanied the formation of the great American Union: they resisted the inevitable propensities of their country and their age. But whether their theories were good or bad, they had the fault of being inapplicable, as a whole, to the society which they wished to govern, and that which occurred under the auspices of Jefferson must therefore have taken place sooner or later. But their government at least gave the new republic time to acquire a certain stability, and afterwards to support without inconvenience the rapid growth of the very doctrines which they had combated. A considerable number of their principles, moreover, were embodied at last in the political creed of their opponents; and the Federal Constitution, which subsists at the present day, is a lasting monument of their patriotism and their wisdom. Great political parties, then, are not to be met with in the United States at the present time. Parties, indeed, may be found which threaten the future of the Union; but there is none which seems to contest the present form of government or the present course of society. The parties by which the Union is menaced do not rest upon principles, but upon material interests. These interests constitute, in the different provinces of so vast an empire, rival nations rather than parties. Thus, upon a recent occasion the North contended for the system of commercial prohibition, and the South took up arms in favor of free



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trade, simply because the North is a manufacturing and the South an agricultural community; and the restrictive system that was profitable to the one was prejudicial to the other. In the absence of great parties the United States swarms with lesser controversies, and public opinion is divided into a thousand minute shades of difference upon questions of detail. The pains that are taken to create parties are inconceivable, and at the present day it is no easy task. In the United States there is no religious animosity, because all religion is respected and no sect is predominant; there is no jealousy of rank, because the people are everything and none can contest their authority; lastly, there is no public misery to serve as a means of agitation, because the physical position of the country opens so wide a field to industry that man only needs to be let alone to be able to accomplish prodigies. Nevertheless, ambitious men will succeed in creating parties, since it is difficult to eject a person from authority upon the mere ground that this place is coveted by others. All the skill of the actors in the political world lies in the art of creating parties. A political aspirant in the United States begins by discerning his own interest, and discovering those other interests which may be collected around and amalgamated with it. He then contrives to find out some doctrine or principle that may suit the purposes of this new association, which he adopts in order to bring forward his party and secure its popularity: just as the imprimatur of the king was in former days printed upon the title page of a volume and was thus incorporated with a book to which it in no wise belonged. This being done, the new party is ushered into the political world. To a stranger all the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to be incomprehensible or puerile, and he is at a loss whether to pity a people who take such arrant trifles in good earnest or to envy that happiness which enables a community to discuss them. But when he comes to study the secret propensities that govern the factions of America, he easily perceives that the greater part of them are more or less connected with one or the other of those two great divisions which have always existed in free communities. The deeper we penetrate into the inmost thought of these parties, the more we perceive that the object of the one is to limit and that of the other to extend the authority of the people. I do not assert that the ostensible purpose or even that the secret aim of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or democracy in the country; but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties, and that, although they escape a superficial observation, they are the main point and soul of every faction in the United States. . . . It sometimes happens in a people among whom various opinions prevail that the balance of parties is lost and one of them obtains an irresistible preponderance, overpowers all obstacles, annihilates its opponents, and appropriates all


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the resources of society to its own use. The vanquished despair of success, hide their heads, and are silent. The nation seems to be governed by a single principle, universal stillness prevails, and the prevailing party assumes the credit of having restored peace and unanimity to the country. But under this apparent unanimity still exist profound differences of opinion, and real opposition. This is what occurred in America; when the democratic party got the upper hand, it took exclusive possession of the conduct of affairs, and from that time the laws and the customs of society have been adapted to its caprices. At the present day the more affluent classes of society have no influence in political affairs; and wealth, far from conferring a right, is rather a cause of unpopularity than a means of attaining power. The rich abandon the lists, through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain, against the poorer classes of their fellow citizens. As they cannot occupy in public a position equivalent to what they hold in private life, they abandon the former and give themselves up to the latter; and they constitute a private society in the state which has its own tastes and pleasures. They submit to this state of things as an irremediable evil, but they are careful not to show that they are galled by its continuance; one often hears them laud the advantages of a republican government and demo-cratic institutions when they are in public. Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them. Mark, for instance, that opulent citizen, who is as anxious as a Jew of the Middle Ages to conceal his wealth. His dress is plain, his demeanor unassuming; but the interior of his dwelling glitters with luxury, and none but a few chosen guests, whom he haughtily styles his equals, are allowed to penetrate into this sanctuary. No European noble is more exclusive in his pleasures or more jealous of the smallest advantages that a privileged station confers. But the same individual crosses the city to reach a dark counting-house in the center of traffic, where everyone may accost him who pleases. If he meets his cobbler on the way, they stop and converse; the two citizens discuss the affairs of the state and shake hands before they part. But beneath this artificial enthusiasm and these obsequious attentions to the preponderating power, it is easy to perceive that the rich have a hearty dislike of the democratic institutions of their country. The people form a power which they at once fear and despise. If the maladministration of the democracy ever brings about a revolutionary crisis and monarchical institutions ever become practicable in the United States, the truth of what I advance will become obvious. The two chief weapons that parties use in order to obtain success are the newspapers and public associations.


CHAPTER

9

THE FIRST KENNEDY-NIXON DEBATE BY RANDALL E. ADKINS




The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate

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36 $ The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate* !

(1960) 1. How important are debates to winning presidential elections? Specifically, what strategies did future presidential nominees learn from the Kennedy-Nixon debates? 2. How do presidential debates differ today from Kennedy and Nixon’s first televised debate? In what ways are they similar?

I

n the 1960 presidential election Democratic senator John Kennedy won the popular vote by just over one hundred thousand votes and the Electoral College by only eighty-four votes. If five thousand votes had shifted from the Democratic to the Republican column in the state of Illinois and twenty-four thousand Texans had voted differently, then Republican Vice President Richard Nixon would have been inaugurated as the thirty-fifth president of the United States. Although never proven, it was widely believed that the Democratic political machines in those two states delivered the election to Kennedy through fraudulent methods. Many factors affect the outcome of elections, but in close campaigns everything plays a role in who wins. Easily the most prominent new feature of the 1960 election was the use of television to broadcast four *www.debates.org/pages/trans60a.html


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debates between Kennedy and Nixon. These were the first-ever presidential debates between the Democratic and Republican nominees, and they were nationally televised. An estimated 66.4 million viewers watched the first debate on September 26, 1960, and that number only slipped slightly for the remaining three. The first debate was moderated by Howard K. Smith of CBS News. A panel of four journalists asked the candidates questions on issues of domestic politics. Afterward, many news outlets considered the debate a draw; a few thought that Kennedy had performed slightly better. (The New York Times reported, “Kennedy on first by a fielder’s choice.”) Most campaign professionals from both parties, on the other hand, saw it as a home run for the Massachusetts senator. Nixon had successfully countered Kennedy’s rhetorical punches point by point, but he had lacked Kennedy’s style in connecting with the audience. The Kennedy-Nixon debates marked the role that television would have in the presidential selection process. For the first time, voters saw both candidates on the same stage, and the visuals proved very influential. During the two weeks prior to the debate, Kennedy had campaigned outdoors, which left him looking very healthy and tan. On the weekend of the first debate, Kennedy rested and met with his advisers periodically to prepare. In contrast, Nixon was hospitalized for two weeks in August for an infection that developed in his knee after banging it into a car door. By late September, he had still not completely recovered. When he arrived in Chicago the evening before the debate, he found that Republican leaders had scheduled five rallies where he was to make an appearance, which allowed him little sleep that night. The afternoon of the debate Nixon made a campaign appearance before the Carpenters Union before taking a few hours to read and reflect upon the materials that his staff had prepared for the debate. By the time he arrived at the site of the debate, he looked generally weak and fatigued. He wore a gray suit and a shirt that fit poorly around the neck because he had lost weight while hospitalized. He refused to wear makeup that would improve his pale complexion on camera, but did allow his staff to apply a powder called “Lazy Shave” to cover up his five o’clock shadow. The result was that his skin tone looked even paler on black and white television and his beard stubble still showed up prominently. Nixon later reported in his mem-



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oirs that his campaign advisers were unanimous that he had won the debate on substance, but overall they felt he lost it by his appearance because “a picture is worth a thousand words.” In preparation for the remaining debates, Nixon regained the weight he had lost by drinking two milkshakes per day, he wore a darker suit, and he applied television makeup. Unfortunately, his efforts came too late: viewership had been highest for the first debate. Incumbents and front-runners could not be convinced to return to the debate podium until 1976. Both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon used Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 to justify their refusal to participate. Known as the Equal Time Provision, it required that when airtime was provided to one candidate it had to be provided to all candidates, including those of third-parties. (Congress had suspended the equal time provision in 1959 to allow for debate between the major party candidates.) In 1975, the Federal Communications Commission classified presidential debates as bona fide news events, which are not subject to the equal time provision. Wasting no time, President Gerald Ford challenged his opponent, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, to a debate in his acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination in August 1976. Carter accepted immediately.

howard k. smith, moderator: Good evening. The television and radio stations of the United States and their affiliated stations are proud to provide facilities for a discussion of issues in the current political campaign by the two major candidates for the presidency. The candidates need no introduction. The Republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, and the Democratic candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy. According to rules set by the candidates themselves, each man shall make an opening statement of approximately eight minutes’ duration and a closing statement of approximately three minutes’ duration. In between the candidates will answer, or comment upon answers to questions put by a panel of correspondents. In this, the first discussion in a series of four uh—joint appearances, the subject-matter has been agreed, will be restricted to internal or domestic American matters. And now for the first opening statement by Senator John F. Kennedy. senator kennedy: Mr. Smith, Mr. Nixon. In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said the question was whether this nation could exist half-slave or


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half-free. In the election of 1960, and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half-slave or half-free, whether it will move in the direction of freedom, in the direction of the road that we are taking, or whether it will move in the direction of slavery. I think it will depend in great measure upon what we do here in the United States, on the kind of society that we build, on the kind of strength that we maintain. We discuss tonight domestic issues, but I would not want that to be any implication to be given that this does not involve directly our struggle with Mr. Khrushchev for survival. Mr. Khrushchev is in New York, and he maintains the Communist offensive throughout the world because of the productive power of the Soviet Union itself. The Chinese Communists have always had a large population. But they are important and dangerous now because they are mounting a major effort within their own country. The kind of country we have here, the kind of society we have, the kind of strength we build in the United States will be the defense of freedom. If we do well here, if we meet our obligations, if we’re moving ahead, then I think freedom will be secure around the world. If we fail, then freedom fails. Therefore, I think the question before the American people is: Are we doing as much as we can do? Are we as strong as we should be? Are we as strong as we must be if we’re going to maintain our independence, and if we’re going to maintain and hold out the hand of friendship to those who look to us for assistance, to those who look to us for survival? I should make it very clear that I do not think we’re doing enough, that I am not satisfied as an American with the progress that we’re making. This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country; and this is a powerful country, but I think it could be a more powerful country. I’m not satisfied to have fifty percent of our steel-mill capacity unused. I’m not satisfied when the United States had last year the lowest rate of economic growth of any major industrialized society in the world. Because economic growth means strength and vitality; it means we’re able to sustain our defenses; it means we’re able to meet our commitments abroad. I’m not satisfied when we have over nine billion dollars worth of food—some of it rotting—even though there is a hungry world, and even though four million Americans wait every month for a food package from the government, which averages five cents a day per individual. I saw cases in West Virginia, here in the United States, where children took home part of their school lunch in order to feed their families because I don’t think we’re meeting our obligations toward these Americans. I’m not satisfied when the Soviet Union is turning out twice as many scientists and engineers as we are. I’m not satisfied when many of our teachers are inadequately paid, or when our children go to school [in] part-time shifts. I think we should have an educational system second to none. I’m not satisfied when I see men like Jimmy Hoffa—in



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charge of the largest union in the United States—still free. I’m not satisfied when we are failing to develop the natural resources of the United States to the fullest. Here in the United States, which developed the Tennessee Valley and which built the Grand Coulee and the other dams in the Northwest United States at the present rate of hydropower production—and that is the hallmark of an industrialized society—the Soviet Union by 1975 will be producing more power than we are. These are all the things, I think, in this country that can make our society strong, or can mean that it stands still. I’m not satisfied until every American enjoys his full constitutional rights. If a Negro baby is born—and this is true also of Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in some of our cities—he has about one-half as much chance to get through high school as a white baby. He has one-third as much chance to get through college as a white student. He has about a third as much chance to be a professional man, about half as much chance to own a house. He has about uh—four times as much chance that he’ll be out of work in his life as the white baby. I think we can do better. I don’t want the talents of any American to go to waste. I know that there are those who want to turn everything over to the government. I don’t at all. I want the individuals to meet their responsibilities. And I want the states to meet their responsibilities. But I think there is also a national responsibility. The argument has been used against every piece of social legislation in the last twenty-five years. The people of the United States individually could not have developed the Tennessee Valley; collectively they could have. A cotton farmer in Georgia or a peanut farmer or a dairy farmer in Wisconsin and Minnesota, he cannot protect himself against the forces of supply and demand in the market place; but working together in effective governmental programs he can do so. Seventeen million Americans, who live over sixty-five on an average Social Security check of about seventy-eight dollars a month, they’re not able to sustain themselves individually, but they can sustain themselves through the social security system. I don’t believe in big government, but I believe in effective governmental action. And I think that’s the only way that the United States is going to maintain its freedom. It’s the only way that we’re going to move ahead. I think we can do a better job. I think we’re going to have to do a better job if we are going to meet the responsibilities which time and events have placed upon us. We cannot turn the job over to anyone else. If the United States fails, then the whole cause of freedom fails. And I think it depends in great measure on what we do here in this country. The reason Franklin Roosevelt was a good neighbor in Latin America was because he was a good neighbor in the United States. Because they felt that the American society was moving again. I want us to recapture that image. I want people in Latin America and Africa and Asia to start to look to America; to see how we’re doing things;


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to wonder what the resident of the United States is doing; and not to look at Khrushchev, or look at the Chinese Communists. That is the obligation upon our generation. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural that this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. I think our generation of Americans has the same rendezvous. The question now is: Can freedom be maintained under the most severe tack—attack it has ever known? I think it can be. And I think in the final analysis it depends upon what we do here. I think it’s time America started moving again. mr. smith: And now the opening statement by Vice President Richard M. Nixon. mr. nixon: Mr. Smith, Senator Kennedy. The things that Senator Kennedy has said many of us can agree with. There is no question but that we cannot discuss our internal affairs in the United States without recognizing that they have a tremendous bearing on our international position. There is no question but that this nation cannot stand still; because we are in a deadly competition, a competition not only with the men in the Kremlin, but the men in Peking. We’re ahead in this competition, as Senator Kennedy, I think, has implied. But when you’re in a race, the only way to stay ahead is to move ahead. And I subscribe completely to the spirit that Senator Kennedy has expressed tonight, the spirit that the United States should move ahead. Where, then, do we disagree? I think we disagree on the implication of his remarks tonight and on the statements that he has made on many occasions during his campaign to the effect that the United States has been standing still. We heard tonight, for example, the statement made that our growth in national product last year was the lowest of any industrial nation in the world. Now last year, of course, was 1958. That happened to be a recession year. But when we look at the growth of G.N.P. this year, a year of recovery, we find that it’s six and nine-tenths per cent and one of the highest in the world today. More about that later. Looking then to this problem of how the United States should move ahead and where the United States is moving, I think it is well that we take the advice of a very famous campaigner: Let’s look at the record. Is the United States standing still? Is it true that this Administration, as Senator Kennedy has charged, has been an Administration of retreat, of defeat, of stagnation? Is it true that, as far as this country is concerned, in the field of electric power, in all of the fields that he has mentioned, we have not been moving ahead. Well, we have a comparison that we can make. We have the record of the Truman Administration of seven and a half years and the seven and a half years of the Eisenhower Ad-



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ministration. When we compare these two records in the areas that Senator Kennedy has—has discussed tonight, I think we find that America has been moving ahead. Let’s take schools. We have built more schools in these last seven and a half years than we built in the previous seven and a half, for that matter in the previous twenty years. Let’s take hydroelectric power. We have developed more hydroelectric power in these seven and a half years than was developed in any previous administration in history. Let us take hospitals. We find that more have been built in this Administration than in the previous Administration. The same is true of highways. Let’s put it in terms that all of us can understand. We often hear gross national product discussed and in that respect may I say that when we compare the growth in this Administration with that of the previous Administration that then there was a total growth of eleven per cent over seven years; in this Administration there has been a total growth of nineteen per cent over seven years. That shows that there’s been more growth in this Administration than in its predecessor. But let’s not put it there; let’s put it in terms of the average family. What has happened to you? We find that your wages have gone up five times as much in the Eisenhower Administration as they did in the Truman Administration. What about the prices you pay? We find that the prices you pay went up five times as much in the Truman Administration as they did in the Eisenhower Administration. What’s the net result of this? This means that the average family income went up fifteen per cent in the Eisenhower years as against two per cent in the Truman years. Now, this is not standing still. But, good as this record is, may I emphasize it isn’t enough. A record is never something to stand on. It’s something to build on. And in building on this record, I believe that we have the secret for progress, we know the way to progress. And I think, first of all, our own record proves that we know the way. Senator Kennedy has suggested that he believes he knows the way. I respect the sincerity which he m- which he makes that suggestion. But on the other hand, when we look at the various programs that he offers, they do not seem to be new. They seem to be simply retreads of the programs of the Truman Administration which preceded it. And I would suggest that during the course of the evening he might indicate those areas in which his programs are new, where they will mean more progress than we had then. What kind of programs are we for? We are for programs that will expand educational opportunities, that will give to all Americans their equal chance for education, for all of the things which are necessary and dear to the hearts of our people. We are for programs, in addition, which will see that our medical care for the aged are—is—are much—is much better handled than it is at the present time. Here again, may I indicate that Senator


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Kennedy and I are not in disagreement as to the aims. We both want to help the old people. We want to see that they do have adequate medical care. The question is the means. I think that the means that I advocate will reach that goal better than the means that he advocates. I could give better examples, but for—for whatever it is, whether it’s in the field of housing, or health, or medical care, or schools, or the eh- development of electric power, we have programs which we believe will move America, move her forward and build on the wonderful record that we have made over these past seven and a half years. Now, when we look at these programs, might I suggest that in evaluating them we often have a tendency to say that the test of a program is how much you’re spending. I will concede that in all the areas to which I have referred Senator Kennedy would have the spe- federal government spend more than I would have it spend. I costed out the cost of the Democratic platform. It runs a minimum of thirteen and two-tenths billions dollars a year more than we are presently spending to a maximum of eighteen billion dollars a year more than we’re presently spending. Now the Republican platform will cost more too. It will cost a minimum of four billion dollars a year more, a maximum of four and nine-tenths billion dollar[s] a year more than we’re presently spending. Now, does this mean that his program is better than ours? Not at all. Because it isn’t a question of how much the federal government spends; it isn’t a question of which government does the most. It is a question of which administration does the right thing. And in our case, I do believe that our programs will stimulate the creative energies of a hundred and eighty million free Americans. I believe the programs that Senator Kennedy advocates will have a tendency to stifle those creative energies, I believe in other words, that his program would lead to the stagnation of the motive power that we need in this country to get progress. The final point that I would like to make is this: Senator Kennedy has suggested in his speeches that we lack compassion for the poor, for the old, and for others that are unfortunate. Let us understand throughout this campaign that his motives and mine are sincere. I know what it means to be poor. I know what it means to see people who are unemployed. I know Senator Kennedy feels as deeply about these problems as I do, but our disagreement is not about the goals for America but only about the means to reach those goals. mr. smith: Thank you, Mr. Nixon. That completes the opening statements, and now the candidates will answer questions or comment upon one another’s answers to questions, put by correspondents of the networks. The correspondents: [introducing themselves: “I’m Sander Vanocur, NBC News;” “I’m Charles Warren, Mutual News;” “I’m Stuart Novins, CBS News;” “Bob Fleming, ABC News.”] The first question to Senator Kennedy from Mr. Fleming.



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mr. fleming: Senator, the Vice President in his campaign has said that you were naive and at times immature. He has raised the question of leadership. On this issue, why do you think people should vote for you rather than the Vice President? mr. kennedy: Well, the Vice President and I came to the Congress together 1946; we both served in the Labor Committee. I’ve been there now for fourteen years, the same period of time that he has, so that our experience in uh— government is comparable. Secondly, I think the question is uh—what are the programs that we advocate, what is the party record that we lead? I come out of the Democratic party, which in this century has produced Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and which supported and sustained these programs which I’ve discussed tonight. Mr. Nixon comes out of the Republican party. He was nominated by it. And it is a fact that through most of these last twenty-five years the Republican leadership has opposed federal aid for education, medical care for the aged, development of the Tennessee Valley, development of our natural resources. I think Mr. Nixon is an effective leader of his party. I hope he would grant me the same. The question before us is: which point of view and which party do we want to lead the United States? mr. smith: Mr. Nixon, would you like to comment on that statement? mr. nixon: I have no comment. mr. smith: The next question: Mr. Novins. mr. novins: Mr. Vice President, your campaign stresses the value of your eight year experience, and the question arises as to whether that experience was as an observer or as a participant or as an initiator of policy-making. Would you tell us please specifically what major proposals you have made in the last eight years that have been adopted by the Administration? mr. nixon: It would be rather difficult to cover them in eight and- in two and a half minutes. I would suggest that these proposals could be mentioned. First, after each of my foreign trips I have made recommendations that have been adopted. For example, after my first trip abroad—abroad, I strongly recommended that we increase our exchange programs particularly as they related to exchange of persons of leaders in the labor field and in the information field. After my trip to South America, I made recommendations that a separate interAmerican lending agency be set up which the South American nations would


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like much better than a lend- than to participate in the lending agencies which treated all the countries of the world the same. Uh—I have made other recommendations after each of the other trips; for example, after my trip abroad to Hungary I made some recommendations with regard to the Hungarian refugee situation which were adopted, not only by the President but some of them were enacted into law by the Congress. Within the Administration, as a chairman of the President’s Committee on Price Stability and Economic Growth, I have had the opportunity to make recommendations which have been adopted within the Administration and which I think have been reasonably effective. I know Senator Kennedy suggested in his speech at Cleveland yesterday that that committee had not been particularly effective. I would only suggest that while we do not take the credit for it—I would not presume to— that since that committee has been formed the price line has been held very well within the United States. mr. kennedy: Well, I would say in the latter that the—and that’s what I found uh—somewhat unsatisfactory about the figures uh—Mr. Nixon, that you used in your previous speech, when you talked about the Truman Administration. You—Mr. Truman came to office in nineteen uh—forty-four and at the end of the war, and uh—difficulties that were facing the United States during that period of transition—1946 when price controls were lifted—so it’s rather difficult to use an overall figure taking those seven and a half years and comparing them to the last eight years. I prefer to take the overall percentage record of the last twenty years of the Democrats and the eight years of the Republicans to show an overall period of growth. In regard to uh—price stability uh—I’m not aware that that committee did produce recommendations that ever were certainly before the Congress from the point of view of legislation in regard to controlling prices. In regard to the exchange of students and labor unions, I am chairman of the subcommittee on Africa and I think that one of the most unfortunate phases of our policy towards that country was the very minute number of exchanges that we had. I think it’s true of Latin America also. We did come forward with a program of students for the Congo of over three hundred which was more than the federal government had for all of Africa the previous year, so that I don’t think that uh—we have moved at least in those two areas with sufficient vigor. . . . mr. smith: The next question to Vice President Nixon from Mr. Vanocur. mr. vanocur: Uh—Mr. Vice President, since the question of executive leadership is a very important campaign issue, I’d like to follow Mr. Novins’ question. Now, Republican campaign slogans—you’ll see them on signs around the coun-



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try as you did last week—say it’s experience that counts—that’s over a picture of yourself; sir uh—implying that you’ve had more governmental executive decision-making uh—experience than uh—your opponent. Now, in his news conference on August twenty-fourth, President Eisenhower was asked to give one example of a major idea of yours that he adopted. His reply was, and I’m quoting; “If you give me a week I might think of one. I don’t remember.” Now that was a month ago, sir, and the President hasn’t brought it up since, and I’m wondering, sir, if you can clarify which version is correct—the one put out by Republican campaign leaders or the one put out by President Eisenhower? mr. nixon: Well, I would suggest, Mr. Vanocur, that uh—if you know the President, that was probably a facetious remark. Uh—I would also suggest that insofar as his statement is concerned, that I think it would be improper for the President of the United States to disclose uh—the instances in which members of his official family had made recommendations, as I have made them through the years to him, which he has accepted or rejected. The President has always maintained and very properly so that he is entitled to get what advice he wants from his cabinet and from his other advisers without disclosing that to anybody—including as a matter of fact the Congress. Now, I can only say this. Through the years I have sat in the National Security Council. I have been in the cabinet. I have met with the legislative leaders. I have met with the President when he made the great decisions with regard to Lebanon, Quemoy and Matsu, other matters. The President has asked for my advice. I have given it. Sometimes my advice has been taken. Sometimes it has not. I do not say that I have made the decisions. And I would say that no president should ever allow anybody else to make the major decisions, [sic] The president only makes the decisions. All that his advisers do is to give counsel when he asks for it. As far as what experience counts and whether that is experience that counts, that isn’t for me to say. Uh—I can only say that my experience is there for the people to consider; Senator Kennedy’s is there for the people to consider. As he pointed out, we came to the Congress in the same year. His experience has been different from mine. Mine has been in the executive branch. His has been in the legislative branch. I would say that the people now have the opportunity to evaluate his as against mine and I think both he and I are going to abide by whatever the people decide. mr. smith: Senator Kennedy. mr. kennedy: Well, I’ll just say that the question is of experience and the question also is uh—what our judgment is of the future, and what our goals are for the United States, and what ability we have to implement those goals.


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Abraham Lincoln came to the presidency in 1860 after a rather little known uh—session in the House of Representatives and after being defeated for the Senate in fifty-eight and was a distinguished president. There’s no certain road to the presidency. There are no guarantees that uh—if you take uh—one road or another that you will be a successful president. I have been in the Congress for fourteen years. I have voted in the last uh—eight years uh—and the Vice President was uh—presiding over the Senate and meeting his other responsibilities. I have met met uh—decisions over eight hundred times on matters which affect not only the domestic security of the United States, but as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The question really is: which candidate and which party can meet the problems that the United States is going to face in the sixties? . . . mr. smith: The next question to Vice President Nixon fa- from Mr. Fleming. mr. fleming: Mr. Vice President, do I take it then you believe that you can work better with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate than Senator Kennedy could work with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate? mr. nixon: I would say this: that we, of course, expect to pick up some seats in both in the House and the Senate. Uh—We would hope to control the House, to get a majority in the House uh—in this election. We cannot, of course, control the Senate. I would say that a president will be able to lead—a president will be able to get his program through—to the effect that he has the support of the country, the support of the people. Sometimes we—we get the opinion that in getting programs through the House or the Senate it’s purely a question of legislative finagling and all that sort of thing. It isn’t really that. Whenever a majority of the people are for a program, the House and the Senate responds to it. And whether this House and Senate, in the next session is Democratic or Republican, if the country will have voted for the candidate for the presidency and for the proposals that he has made, I believe that you will find that the president, if it were a Republican, as it would be in my case, would be able to get his program through that Congress. Now, I also say that as far as Senator Kennedy’s proposals are concerned, that, again, the question is not simply one of uh—a presidential veto stopping programs. You must always remember that a president can’t stop anything unless he has the people behind him. And the reason President Eisenhower’s vetoes have been sustained—the reason the Congress does not send up bills to him which they think will be vetoed—is because the people and the Congress, the majority of them, know the country is behind the President.



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mr. smith: Senator Kennedy. mr. kennedy: Well, now let’s look at these bills that the Vice President suggests were too extreme. One was a bill for a dollar twenty-five cents an hour for anyone who works in a store or company that has a million dollars a year business. I don’t think that’s extreme at all; and yet nearly two-thirds to threefourths of the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against that proposal. Secondly was the federal aid to education bill. It—it was a very uh— because of the defeat of teacher salaries, it was not a bill that uh—met in my opinion the need. The fact of the matter is it was a bill that was less than you recommended, Mr. Nixon, this morning in your proposal. It was not an extreme bill and yet we could not get one Republican to join, at least I think four of the eight Democrats voted to send it to the floor of the House—not one Republican—and they joined with those Democrats who were opposed to it. I don’t say the Democrats are united in their support of the program. But I do say a majority are. And I say a majority of the Republicans are opposed to it. The third is medical care for the aged which is tied to Social Security, which is financed out of Social Security funds. It does not put a deficit on the Treasury. The proposal advanced by you and by Mr. Javits would have cost six hundred millions of dollars—Mr. Rockefeller rejected it in New York, said he didn’t agree with the financing at all, said it ought to be on Social Security. So these are three programs which are quite moderate. I think it shows the difference between the two parties. One party is ready to move in these programs. The other party gives them lip service. . . . mr. smith: Can I have the summation time please? We’ve completed our questions and our comments, and in just a moment, we’ll have the summation time. voice: This will allow three minutes and twenty seconds for the summation by each candidate. mr. smith: Three minutes and twenty seconds for each candidate. Vice President Nixon, will you make the first summation? mr. nixon: Thank you, Mr. Smith. Senator Kennedy. First of all, I think it is well to put in perspective where we really do stand with regard to the Soviet Union in this whole matter of growth. The Soviet Union has been moving faster than we have. But the reason for that is obvious. They start from a much lower base. Although they have been moving faster in growth than we have,


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we find, for example, today that their total gross national product is only fortyfour per cent of our total gross national product. That’s the same percentage that it was twenty years ago. And as far as the absolute gap is concerned, we find that the United States is even further ahead than it was twenty years ago. Is this any reason for complacency? Not at all. Because these are determined men. They are fanatical men. And we have to get the very most of uh—out uh—out of our economy. I agree with Senator Kennedy completely on that score. Where we disagree is in the means that we would use to get the most out of our economy. I respectfully submit that Senator Kennedy too often would rely too much on the federal government, on what it would do to solve our problems, to stimulate growth. I believe that when we examine the Democratic platform, when we examine the proposals that he has discussed tonight, when we compare them with the proposals that I have made, that these proposals that he makes would not result in greater growth for this country than would be the case if we followed the programs that I have advocated. There are many of the points that he has made that I would like to comment upon. The one in the field of health is worth mentioning. Our health program—the one that Senator Javits and other Republican Senators, as well as I supported—is one that provides for all people over sixty-five who want health insurance, the opportunity to have it if they want it. It provides a choice of having either government insurance or private insurance. But it compels nobody to have insurance who does not want it. His program under Social Security, would require everybody who had Social Security to take government health insurance whether he wanted it or not. And it would not cover several million people who are not covered by Social Security at all. Here is one place where I think that our program does a better job than his. The other point that I would make is this: this downgrading of how much things cost I think many of our people will understand better when they look at what happened when—during the Truman Administration when the government was spending more than it took in—we found savings over a lifetime eaten up by inflation. We found the people who could least afford it—people on retired incomes uh—people on fixed incomes—we found them unable to meet their bills at the end of the month. It is essential that a man who’s president of this country certainly stand for every program that will mean for growth. And I stand for programs that will mean growth and progress. But it is also essential that he not allow a dollar spent that could be better spent by the people themselves. mr. smith: Senator Kennedy, your conclusion. mr. kennedy: The point was made by Mr. Nixon that the Soviet production is only forty-four percent of ours. I must say that forty-four percent and that



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Memorandum on Television Debate with Vice President Nixon, September 26th To: From:

Senator John F. Kennedy Clark M. Clifford

Your time is so limited, I shall make my comments as brief as possible. 1) You clearly came out the winner. You were clear, concise and very convincing. 2) You kept Nixon on the defensive. This kept him off balance and was a great plus for you. 3) Unquestionably this appearance made you votes. I feel sure the other three will do the same. Suggestions. 1) Nixon is making a determined effort to convince the American people your and his goals are the same. That the only difference lies in the means to attain those goals. This is false. The goals are very different, and he must not be permitted to create the illusion that you and he are working toward the same end. Be prepared the next time to point out specifically the positive differences that exist in goals, i.e., minimum wage, housing, etc. If Nixon can convince the people that his and your philosophies are the same, then he will rob you of one of your greatest strengths. 2) Attention must be given to adding greater warmth to your image. If you can retain the technical brilliance and obvious ability, but also project the element of warm, human understanding, you will possess an unbeatable combination. Give illustrations based upon contacts with service personnel when you were in the Navy. Also conversations you have had with ordinary people who have discussed their problems with you during the campaign. 3) Take advantage of every opportunity to appear with Nixon. You are better than he is. C.M.C. September 27, 1960 SOURCE:

“Memorandum on Television Debate with Vice President Nixon September 26th,” Clark M. Clifford to Sen. John F. Kennedy, September 27, 1960, Personal Papers of Robert F. Kennedy, Pre-Administration Political Files 1952–1960, Kennedy-Nixon Debate Folder, Box 36, John F. Kennedy Library.


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Soviet country is causing us a good deal of trouble tonight. I want to make sure that it stays in that relationship. I don’t want to see the day when it’s sixty percent of ours, and seventy and seventy-five and eighty and ninety percent of ours, with all the force and power that it could bring to bear in order to cause our destruction. Secondly, the Vice President mentioned medical care for the aged. Our program was an amendment to the Kerr bill. The Kerr bill provided assistance to all those who were not on Social Security. I think it’s a very clear contrast. In 1935, when the Social Security Act was written, ninety-four out of ninety-five Republicans voted against it. Mr. Landon ran in 1936 to repeal it. In August of 1960, when we tried to get it again, but this time for medical care, we received the support of one Republican in the Senate on this occasion. Thirdly, I think the question before the American people is: as they look at this country and as they look at the world around them, the goals are the same for all Americans. The means are at question. The means are at issue. If you feel that everything that is being done now is satisfactory, that the relative power and prestige and strength of the United States is increasing in relation to that of the Communists; that we’ve b- gaining more security, that we are achieving everything as a nation that we should achieve, that we are achieving a better life for our citizens and greater strength, then I agree. I think you should vote for Mr. Nixon. But if you feel that we have to move again in the sixties, that the function of the president is to set before the people the unfinished business of our society as Franklin Roosevelt did in the thirties, the agenda for our people—what we must do as a society to meet our needs in this country and protect our security and help the cause of freedom. As I said at the beginning, the question before us all, that faces all Republicans and all Democrats, is: can freedom in the next generation conquer, or are the Communists going to be successful? That’s the great issue. And if we meet our responsibilities I think freedom will conquer. If we fail, if we fail to move ahead, if we fail to develop sufficient military and economic and social strength here in this country, then I think that uh—the tide could begin to run against us. And I don’t want historians, ten years from now, to say, these were the years when the tide ran out for the United States. I want them to say these were the years when the tide came in; these were the years when the United States started to move again. That’s the question before the American people, and only you can decide what you want, what you want this country to be, what you want to do with the future. I think we’re ready to move. And it is to that great task, if we’re successful, that we will address ourselves. mr. smith: Thank you very much, gentlemen. This hour has gone by all too quickly. Thank you very much for permitting us to present the next president


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of the United States on this unique program. I’ve been asked by the candidates to thank the American networks and the affiliated stations for providing time and facilities for this joint appearance. Other debates in this series will be announced later and will be on different subjects. This is Howard K. Smith. Good night from Chicago.



CHAPTER

10

CONGRESS, THE TROUBLED INSTITUTION BY STEVEN S. SMITH

Excerpted from Samuel Kernell, Steven S. Smith, PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF AMERICAN POLITICS: CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY READINGS, 4TH EDITION (Washington: DC, CQ Press, 2010), pp. 212-227.



Chapter 6

Congress

6-1

Congress, The Troubled Institution Steven S. Smith Political scientist Steven Smith outlines major trends in congressional politics—the polarization of Congress, the abuse of congressional procedures by the parties, the flow of power from Congress to the president, and the public’s low esteem for Congress. Smith shows how these developments are interrelated and concludes that, while some reforms would improve Congress, addressing the underlying polarization will require a more basic change in American politics. CONGRESS IS CURRENTLY A troubled institution. It usually is. At the moment, Congress appears handcuffed by deep partisan polarization, seems to thwart the will of the people when it fails to act on important problems, looks weak in comparison with the president and other executive officials, and is held in low esteem by most Americans. Presidents of both parties complain about its slowness, the media highlights “earmarks,” “pork,” and other characterizations of what some consider wasteful spending, and scandals involving members of Congress surface on a seemingly regular basis. Even legislators who retire from Congress carp about the institution to which they so frequently sought reelection. It also is true that Congress is the most powerful national legislature in the world. It is formally independent of the chief executive, its jurisdiction is very Source: This piece is an original essay commissioned for this volume.

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broad, it sets its own agenda, and its members are elected independently of the executive. The executive and judicial branches cannot spend money without Congress’s approval, the president needs the approval of the Senate to appoint senior executive officials and judges and to implement treaties, and Congress has wide-ranging powers to investigate the executive branch. Nevertheless, in everyday politics Congress is at a severe disadvantage in its relationship with the president and the courts. Unlike the executive branch, Congress is not led by a single leader, like the president, who can deliberate in private and articulate a single policy for his branch. Instead, every member has an equal vote and the two houses must negotiate their differences on legislation. Unlike any federal court, Congress is large and unwieldy, it is bicameral, its deliberations are quite visible, and its floor proceedings are televised. Congress does not speak with one voice, cannot move quickly most of the time, and is quite permeable to outside influence. Congress’s political weaknesses have been exposed in recent years. Partisanship, deadlock on key issues, readiness to defer to the president in a crisis, and public despair with its performance have plagued Congress. This article outlines and evaluates these weaknesses.

A Polarized Congress The partisan tone of legislators may be the most conspicuous feature of polarized congressional politics over the past twenty-five years. There is more to polarization than the derisive tone of the legislators’ rhetoric. The deep and wide differences existing between the parties and are evident in legislators’ floor voting behavior. Figure 1, shows the distribution of the members of the House and Senate on a liberal-to-conservative scale, based on a statistical analysis of all roll-call votes. The distribution covers two Congresses, the 92nd (1971–1972) and the 110th (2007–2008). In the early 1970s, Democrats were far more liberal than Republicans on average and Republicans were more cohesive than the Democrats, but neither house was very polarized by party. In the House, the voting patterns of nearly half of the membership fell between the most liberal Republican and most conservative Democrat. In the Senate, this middle group comprised over a third of the Senate membership. These large blocs of legislators in the middle of the policy spectrum dictated outcomes. The pattern has been different since the late 1980s. In the Senate of 2007–2008, only Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republicans Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine occupy the middle space between the otherwise cohesive parties. By voting behavior, not just rhetoric, the parties are sharply polarized.


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 Figure 1. Liberal-Conservative Scores in Selected Congresses, Democrats in Gray, Republicans in White

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The polarization of congressional parties and politics is the product of multiple forces in American politics. The social upheaval of the 1960s and early 1970s generated the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the youth culture, and other social and cultural developments, which in turn spawned a reaction that attracted the support of conservatives of both parties, particularly in rural America and the South. Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion, seemed to catalyze Christian conservatives, formerly a dormant group in American politics, to mobilize for the Republicans. Republican candidates and strategists recognized an opportunity to join economic and social conservatives in a larger coalition that could upset the long-standing Democratic majorities, consisting of an uneasy alliance between northern liberals and white southern conservatives. The realignment of political values and party preferences that started in the late 1960s began to alter the composition of Congress in the 1970s. In many


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places in the South, Republican legislators replaced conservative Democrats, thus making the congressional Democrats more uniformly liberal and reinforcing the conservative forces among congressional Republicans. In the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast, many moderate Republicans lost to more liberal Democrats, which reinforced the liberal leanings among congressional Democrats and the conservative trend among Republicans. In the 1980s, the Republicans began to elect conservative leaders from the South, and the Democrats lost the mix of southern leaders who were important to the party in the mid-twentieth century. As the composition of the party elites changed, the electorate began to sort itself so that political attitudes on economic and social issues were more strongly aligned with party preferences. In nearly every part of the country, the electorate supporting the Democrats became more liberal and the electorate supporting the Republicans became more conservative. As a result, political pressures from home became more uniform among the legislators of each party. The successive elections of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s brought in legislators who were even more polarized by party. The strategies of party leaders, first among Republicans and then the Democrats, enhanced this polarization. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Republicans in the House, led by Georgia’s Newt Gingrich, sought disciplined voting within the party to force Democratic leaders to draw support from conservative Democrats to win floor votes. Conservative Democrats, in turn, had more difficulty gaining reelection in their conservative districts and states. These developments were mutually reinforcing. As each party became more cohesive, its leadership became more assertive and placed more pressure on misfits within the party. As national party leaders, local party activists, and the electorate sorted themselves by party, primary election winners became more polarized and the electorate was more frequently given a choice on the extremes, between quite liberal Democrats and quite conservative Republicans. Only liberal legislators had a chance to be elected a leader among congressional Democrats; only conservative legislators had a chance to be elected a leader among congressional Republicans. As the parties became more polarized, their leaders became more partisan. Contrary to popular belief, redrawing district lines to stack House districts with the partisans of one party does not explain this degree of polarization. The Senate, for which state lines are never changed, suffers from the same party polarization as the House, which is subject to redistricting. Instead, the sorting of the electorate and legislators into parties with distinctive political attitudes accounts for the durable pattern of the past two decades.


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Legislative Pathologies in Congress The consequences of partisan polarization in Congress are quite different in the two houses. Polarization in the House has yielded a streamlined, centralized process that can speed legislation to passage, but this process often excludes the minority party in ways that intensify minority frustration and partisan passions. In contrast, polarized parties and super-majority rule in the Senate cause delay and inaction, an outcome that encourages both parties to engage in a blame game out of frustration. Because both houses must approve legislation, Senate obstructionism can kill many bills.

Features of a Polarized House The House majority party is able to control the floor agenda and pass legislation as long as it is reasonably cohesive. Cohesion is the product of several features of the modern House: • The Speaker, as leader of the majority party, serves as the presiding officer and can freely recognize members to make motions on the floor, such as calling up bills for consideration. • The Committee on Rules, which has been under the control of the Speaker since the early 1970s, can report resolutions that, if adopted by a House majority, can bring bills and conference reports to the floor and limit debate and amendments. A cohesive majority party can get these resolutions, called “special rules,” adopted. • The Speaker appoints conference committees and can structure their membership to suit his party’s needs.

Polarized parties mean that a cohesive majority party can readily gain House approval of special rules, limit minority opportunities to offer proposals, pass legislation, and control conference committee negotiations with the Senate. These features of a polarized House speed legislative action. Unfortunately for the House minority party, partisan polarization also tends to produce a process so dominated by majority party members that minority party members are often excluded from meaningful participation. Both Democratic and Republican majority parties have moved decisions on the most important policies from standing committees, where the minority is represented proportionately in most cases, to the leadership and informal work groups of the majority party, where the minority is not represented at all. Both Democratic and Republican majority parties have so restricted floor amendments on major bills that the minority party often does not have a meaningful opportunity to


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propose alternatives and attract some support from majority party members for them.

Features of a Polarized Senate 1. The majority party’s leader, the Majority Leader, does not preside and instead attempts to influence the Senate by making motions from the floor. 2. Most motions can be filibustered—that is, subjected to unending debate—and so the minority can attempt to obstruct action on bills it dislikes. 3. To overcome a filibuster or threatened filibuster of most bills, a three-fifths majority of all elected senators (60 when 99 or all 100 seats are filled) is required to invoke cloture (close debate) and get a vote to pass a bill. 4. The ability of the minority to filibuster proposals to change these rules means that the majority party cannot put in place rules similar to those that so advantage a House majority party. A two-thirds majority of senators voting (67 when 100 senators are voting) is required to invoke cloture on legislation that changes the rules.

Polarized parties mean that a sizable minority party—one with 41 or more members—can block majority party legislation on the floor. This feature of a polarized Senate can delay or even kill legislation. For the Senate majority party, partisan polarization tends to produce public expectations that the majority party can pass its legislation but gives the minority party the parliamentary tools to prevent that from happening. And the minority party has been exploiting those parliamentary tools with greater frequency. Figure 2 shows the number of filibusters and cloture votes in Congresses since the mid-twentieth century. Counting filibusters is not easy (distinguishing between talk and obstructionism is often difficult and even threatened filibusters can be effective in killing a bill), but the count reflects real experience. Plainly, the record of increased filibustering since the late 1980s is very different than the previous decades. Partisan polarization contributes to filibustering in powerful ways. A minority party leader finds it much easier to employ obstructionist tactics when no one from his party objects. Moreover, obstructionism is more likely to succeed in blocking majority party legislation, forcing compromise, or killing legislation, when the minority party is united and can prevent cloture. In response, the majority party leader attempts cloture more frequently, often several times on the same bill. The majority party members complain about minority obstructionism and minority party members complain that the majority is too quick to attempt to shut off debate and minority amendments.


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 Figure 2. The Increase in Filibusters and Cloture Votes in Recent Decades

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Do filibusters matter? In the polarized Congress of the last two decades, filibusters have made the Senate the primary burial ground of legislation. Political scientist Barbara Sinclair has demonstrated that in Congresses since the early 1990s 33 of 80 major bills that died at some stage had passed the House but died in the Senate; only 3 died in the House after passing the Senate (others passed neither house or were vetoed). In contrast, in the 1970s and 1980s, only 12 of 42 major bills that died at some stage had passed the House but died in the Senate; 8 died in the House after passing the Senate. The problems associated with the filibuster continue to intensify. In March 2009 Senate Republicans—all 41 of them—signed a letter to President Barack Obama to encourage the president to renominate President Bush’s nominees for the federal


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courts. They warned, “Regretfully, if we are not consulted on, and approve of, a nominee from our states, the Republican Conference will be unable to support moving forward on that nominee. And we will act to preserve this principle and the rights of our colleagues if it is not.” That is, before President Obama offered a single nomination to the federal courts, the Republican minority demanded that the president defer to them under threat of blocking his nominees by filibuster. In the polarized Congress, conference committees have fallen into disuse. Because conference committees approve compromise legislation with the majority support of conferees from each house, the like-minded majority party conferees do not need the support of minority party members and can largely ignore them. As a result, majority party members consult with each other without any minority legislators or staff present and appear to announce outcomes. In recent Congresses, the majority party went so far as to circumvent conference committees altogether by having majority party and committee leaders of the two houses negotiate compromises without appointing conference committees and then having the agreements incorporated as amendments between the houses. Even the formality of minority party participation is avoided. These patterns have intensified and even personalized partisan conflict. Legislators who value a meaningful voice in policymaking are either frustrated at being excluded (the House minority party) or for having a majority that is less than the super majority required to pass legislation (the Senate majority party). Tolerance of the other party has become very thin. Distrust of the other side is so widespread that opportunities for real cross-party deliberation are ignored. Largely because of the unique features of the Senate, and often with the contribution of divided party control of the House, Senate, and presidency, polarized parties create a strong bias against passing legislation. As Sinclair shows, more major legislation has been killed after the parties became so polarized in the late 1980s than in the previous two decades. A polarized Senate gets hung up on filibusters, while a House, Senate, and presidency controlled by different and polarized parties cannot agree on legislation.

A Weakened Congress Over the past decade the power of Congress has been challenged on several fronts. A series of crises—terrorism, the war in Iraq, and the economic crisis has led the president to seek and receive broad powers with almost no detailed direction from Congress in the legislation. The president also has asserted broad powers without any congressional participation by acting through executive orders or other means. President George W. Bush and his top advisers claimed a general theory of


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presidential power known as the theory of the unitary executive that the president can control the actions of all executive branch agencies, even when the law gives authority directly to department and agency officials. To follow is a brief description of the major ways in which Congress has yielded power to the president in recent years. Congress, under the basic constitutional framework, must delegate some power to the executive branch to implement policies Congress deems desirable. Unless the president has constitutional power of his own, Congress can detail how the delegated power is to be used. If Congress fails to provide the detail, or at least to limit the delegation to a short period or to carefully control spending for the purpose, the president is granted power that Congress could reserve for itself. Incentives to delegate broad power to the president are greatest in emergencies. In an emergency a president can argue that the national interest requires that the chief executive quickly be given authority act with the flexibility required to meet unknown contingencies. Legislators can hope that Congress’s control over spending and oversight activities will keep the executive in check, but, in practice, the president’s advantage in public relations, control over information, and partisan considerations may limit Congress’s ability to check the use of power once it is delegated to the president. In a Congress highly polarized by party, the tendency to grant unfettered power to the executive is exceptionally great when the same party controls both houses of Congress and the White House. During the six years from 2001 to 2006 of Republican majorities in Congress and a Republican president, the fight against terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led Congress to grant sweeping powers to President George W. Bush. By historical standards, Congress held very few hearings on the broad sweep of issues during the period—prewar intelligence, the conduct of the war in Iraq, the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, the treatment of detainees, and reform of the intelligence apparatus. The use of federal dollars and the constitutionality of executive actions were frequently questioned by legislators and the media but seldom in congressional hearings or investigations. Once the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003 out of 22 agencies, Congress did not seriously scrutinize the functioning of the new department until one of its units, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, mismanaged the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the intensely partisan atmosphere of Washington, serious oversight of a Republican administration by a Republican Congress would only give the Democratic opposition opportunities to score points. Partisan convenience, rather than a commitment to check the use of power, seemed to drive the congressional oversight agenda.


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In the meantime, President Bush took existing trends in presidential assertions of unilateral power to a greater extreme. The administration broadened its interpretation of executive privilege to deny information to Congress. President Bush used executive orders more broadly to direct executive agencies, sometimes in contravention of statutes. President Bush used signing statements liberally when signing legislation into law to assert that he would not implement features of the law that he considered unconstitutional infringements on his power. More generally, President Bush and key figures in his administration subscribed to the theory of a unitary executive. The theory holds that the president has line authority over all parts of the executive branch. Bush administration officials used the logic of the argument to justify presidential signing statements and other intrusions into statutory governance of executive agencies. To be sure, there is a compelling argument that the commander-in-chief role assigned to the president by the Constitution gives the president strong authority over the use of the armed forces. But, it is reasonable to argue and even seems historically accurate to say, Congress is free to direct or constrain other executive agencies by law. Democrats, once again in the majority after the 2006 mid-term elections, objected to Bush’s view of his powers but were unable to do much about it before the end of Bush’s second term. The Democrats stepped up oversight activities, forced dozens of administration officials to testify, and attempted to impose a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, but the president proved to have a strategic advantage in most of the confrontations with Congress. Once his policy was in place, he could rely on Senate Republicans to obstruct votes on unfriendly legislation and, if need be, veto legislation to block it. And President Bush could delay or assert executive privilege when hostile congressional committees attempted to investigate executive actions—and the approaching end of his second term meant that he did not have to delay for long. President Obama, of course, dealing with a friendly Congress, ordered executive agencies to ignore President Bush’s signing statements unless they first consulted the Department of Justice. National emergencies can motivate even an opposition Congress to grant sweeping authority to a president, as the Democrats did in 2008 in response to the economic crisis. With Wall Street investment banks about to the collapse in late 2008, the Bush administration requested and received a $700 billion authorization for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to “restore liquidity and stability to the financial system,” primarily by purchasing soured assets, mainly mortgage-backed securities, and thus stabilizing the banking system. The fear, widely shared by economists and administration


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officials, was that the national economy would suffer badly if major financial institutions failed. While some conservative Republicans opposed the bill, most Republicans and nearly all Democrats supported the legislation. To the surprise of many members of Congress, the administration used most of the first half of the TARP funds to buy ownership stakes in banks and insurance companies to shore up their balance sheets. The second half, which Congress could have denied by passing a resolution of disapproval, was not fully dedicated at the time of this writing. Many members of Congress were nervous about a broad delegation of power to the Treasury and so imposed multiple mechanisms overlapping oversight and reporting responsibilities. A Congressional Oversight Panel, soon chaired by a Harvard professor, was created to review the work of Treasury and report to Congress every thirty days. The comptroller general of the General Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, was required to monitor the program and report every sixty days. Treasury itself was required to file reports with Congress, a special inspector general was created, and a board comprised of executive officials was established to oversee implementation of the bill and report to Congress quarterly. The oversight was likely to be taken seriously, but the delegation of power nevertheless represented one of the vaguest delegations of power for the authorization of such a large sum of money. Moreover, the administration moved so quickly in dedicating the funds that congressional oversight would long post-date irreversible executive action. Later reports indicated that the executive branch had a difficult time accounting for the way the banks used federal funds.

The Unpopular Congress The popularity of Congress ebbs and flows with the public’s confidence in government. When the president’s ratings and trust in government improved after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Congress’s approval ratings improved, too (Figure 3). Nevertheless, Congress’s performance ratings are almost always below those of the president and the Supreme Court—when President George W. Bush earned approval ratings in the 20s, Congress managed to fall into the teens. The legislative process is easy to dislike—it often generates political posturing and grandstanding, it necessarily involves bargaining, and it often leaves broken promises in its trail. Members of Congress often appear self-serving as they pursue their political careers and represent interests and reflect values


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that are controversial. And many Americans find the intense partisanship that Congress has exhibited in the last two decades to be quite distasteful . The public relations efforts of the congressional parties probably make matters worse by emphasizing partisan and derisive messages. In contrast, the Supreme Court is cloaked in ritual and is seldom seen or heard by the general public. The president is represented by a single, large, and professional public relations machine. Some of Congress’s low standing is the fault of a few of its members. Scandals, even when they involve a single member, add to the public’s frustration with Congress and have contributed to the institution’s poor ratings in opinion polls. In fact, Congress seems to be a never-ending source of comic relief, like the joke about the legislator who kept referring to the presiding officer as “Your Honor.”


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HIGHLIGHTS OF RECENT CONGRESSIONAL ETHICS SCANDALS • 1989: House Speaker James Wright (D-Texas) resigned after Republicans charged him with ethics violations for receiving extraordinarily large royalties on a book. • 1989: Questions about the propriety of campaign contributions were raised in the “Keating Five” affair, which concerned the relationship between five senators and a prominent savings-and-loan owner seeking to block an investigation of his financial dealings. • 1991: Sen. David Durenburger (R-Minn.) was condemned in a unanimously approved Senate resolution for signing a book deal and for seeking reimbursement for expenses for staying in a condo that he owned. • 1992: The disclosure that many House members had repeatedly overdrawn their accounts at the House disbursement office led people to believe that members enjoyed special privileges. • 1995: A long investigation of sexual harassment charges against Senator Robert Packwood (R-Oregon) led to his forced resignation from office. • 1995: Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was found guilty of illegally receiving cash for personal use from the House post office. He later served a prison term. • 1995: Rep. Enid Waldholtze (R-Utah) retired after her husband was charged with felonies in conjunction with raising funds for her campaign. • 1997: Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) agreed to pay $300,000 in fines based on charges that he used nonprofit organizations for political purposes and misled the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. • 1998: Rep. Jay Kim (R-Cal.) pleaded guilty to charges involving over $250,000 in illegal campaign contributions. • 2002: Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (D-Ohio) was convicted of receiving bribes in exchange for helping businesses get government contracts and of engaging in a pattern of racketeering since taking office in 1985. • 2004: House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Texas) was issued letters of admonition by the House ethics committee for improperly promising to endorse the son of Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) in exchange for Smith’s vote on a bill and for attending a fundraising event with lobbyists for a company that was lobbying him on pending legislation.


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Box continued

• 2005: Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) resigned and pleaded guilty to taking more than $2.4 million in bribes and related tax evasion and fraud, the largest financial sum involving an individual member. • 2006: Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas) resigned after being indicted in Texas for laundering money through a national party committee in his effort to redistrict Texas congressional districts. • 2006: Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) won reelection to the House but was denied a Ways and Means committee assignment after FBI agents videotaped him appearing to solicit a bribe and later found $90,000 of the marked cash in his freezer—making this “the cold cash scandal.” Jefferson was defeated for reelection in 2008. The prosecution continues at this writing. • 2006: Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned after it was disclosed that he sent sexually explicit e-mail messages to underage House pages. • 2006: Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) pleaded guilty to making false statements and conspiracy in relation to receiving thousands of dollars in gifts from lobbyist Jack Abramoff. A Ney aide also pleaded guilty for receiving gifts. Separately, Abramoff pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion. • 2008: Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was convicted of seven counts of failing to disclose gifts related to the renovation of his Alaska home on his Senate financial disclosure forms. At this writing, Stevens is pursuing additional legal avenues, but he was defeated for reelection in November 2008. His conviction was set aside in 2009 because of prosecutorial improprieties. • 2008: Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla) confessed that he had had an extramarital affair with a staff member. Shortly after news reports indicated that Mahoney attempted to buy the staff member’s silence, his wife filed for divorce and he was defeated for reelection.

There is no doubt that a large majority of today’s members behave ethically. There is also no doubt that the ethical standards applied by the public, the media, and Congress itself are higher today than at any other time. Yet, there is no denying that the seemingly regular flow of scandals harms Congress’s standing with the American people. Incumbents and candidates for Congress contribute to the generally low esteem of their colleagues in another way. Many of them, maybe most, complain about the institution to which they work so hard to get and stay elected. Denigrating the institution is an old technique in American campaigns that has


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become even more conspicuous in recent decades. Indeed, many recent arrivals on Capitol Hill promised to end “business as usual” in Washington and to push through reforms to “fix” Congress—to end partisanship, reform the system of congressional perks and earmarks, to stop the influence of special interests, and so on. Yet while Congress languishes with mediocre approval ratings, individual members of Congress continue to do quite well. Typically, Gallup polls find that about 70 percent of the public approves of the way its own member of Congress handles the job. Most incumbents, typically more than 90 percent, successfully gain reelection when they seek it. Running for Congress by running against Congress seems to work quite well. Congressional campaigns have become personal and often very ugly. In the polarized environment of the recent past, candidates win their parties’ primaries to get on the general election ballot by demonstrating their commitment to party principles. In the general election campaign, the candidates demonize their opponents. The winning candidates emerging from these campaigns have acquired a partisan style that they carry with them into Congress, reinforcing the partisan polarization.

Directions for Reform Partisanship, mean and ugly campaigns, congressional gridlock, and the low esteem of Congress feed on each other. They have produced a dysfunctional Congress that alienates the public, discourages qualified people from running for seats in the House and Senate, and far too often fails to act on serious problems. Presidents fill the voids created by a handcuffed Congress when they can, weakening congressional participation in important policy arenas and undermining the representational basis for policymaking. What can be done? First, it is important to keep in mind that the partisan polarization that is behind much of Congress’s problems is not readily remedied by Congress. We have a right to expect more civil and tolerant behavior by legislators and their leaders, but we cannot expect legislators to move far from the policy positions that got them elected. Thus, in the short run, the burden is on American voters to elect more moderate candidates who, as legislators, will demand less partisan behavior from their leaders and insist on the compromises necessary to address the policy challenges facing the country. I am not hopeful. Nevertheless, legislators should take steps to improve their institution. In both houses, policymaking and interpersonal relations would be improved with fewer three- and four-day work weeks and more five-day work weeks, which would create less conflict between floor and committee sessions and perhaps keep legislators


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in Washington for more weekends. It’s not easy for legislators to keep their partisanship in check when they spend little time with each other except to rush from place to place and cast votes. Moreover, we cannot expect Congress to engage in creative legislative activity and meaningful oversight on the part-time schedule that Congress has maintained in recent decades. Unfortunately, legislators are not likely to happily give up time in their districts and states to make this possible. In the House, the majority party must work much harder to protect the minority party’s ability to participate in policymaking in a meaningful way. The standing committees should be used whenever possible as forums for the exchange of ideas. Other rulemaking reforms include observing layover rules guaranteeing the passage of time before action is taken and preserving amendment opportunities in committees and on the floor. The majority party cannot be expected to tolerate a minority that repeatedly fails to propose serious amendments and uses nearly all of its opportunities to participate to score political points. So again, legislators would have to set aside their real differences to reduce partisanship and find a way to compromise across a wide partisan divide. In the present polarized atmosphere, this is perhaps not too realistic. In the Senate, no reform could be more important than filibuster reform. The practice is long-standing, but is justified by neither the Constitution nor early Senate rules. It developed quite accidentally when the Senate failed to include the motion of the previous question, used in the House to limit debate, in a codification of its rules. The practice of filibustering has come to be a regular means of obstructionism for the minority, effectively raising the threshold for passing legislation from 51 to 60 for nearly all legislation of more than modest importance. The Senate minority party is not likely to endorse filibuster reform anytime soon.


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GEORGE NORRIS'S RESOLUTION TO CHANGE THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE HOUSE RULES COMMITTEE BY RANDALL E. ADKINS




Resolution to Change House Rules Committee Membership 159

26 $ George Norris’s Resolution to Change the Membership of the House Rules Committee* !

(1910) 1. The Speaker of the House of Representatives is a powerful position. How did denying the Speaker the chance to serve as the chair of the Rules Committee decrease Cannon’s influence? 2. Is it important for the Speaker of the House to maintain party discipline? Why or why not?

T

he power of the Speaker of the House of Representatives grew significantly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially under the leadership of Illinois Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon. At that time the presiding officer of the chamber also served as chair of the powerful Rules Committee. This committee was not only responsible for determining the order and circumstances whereby legislation was brought to the floor, but it also made committee assignments. “Uncle Joe,” Speaker from 1903 to 1910, was a firm believer in *www.archives.gov/exhibits/treasures_of_congress/Images/page_16/53b.html


160 Resolution to Change House Rules Committee Membership

HRes. Resolved that the rules of the House be amended as follows: The Committee on Rules shall consist of fifteen members, nine of whom shall be members of the majority party and six of whom shall be members of the minority party, to be selected as follows: The States of the Union shall be divided, by a committee of three, elected by the House for that purpose, into nine groups, each group containing, as near as may be, an equal number of members belonging to the majority party. The States of the Union shall likewise be divided into six groups, each group containing, as near as may be, an equal number of members belonging to the minority party. At 10:00 o’clock A. M. of the day following the adoption of the report of said committee, each of said groups shall meet and select one of its members number a member of the Committee on Rules. The place of meeting for each of said groups shall be designated by the said committee of three, in its report. Each of said groups shall report to the House the name of the member selected for membership on the Committee on Rules. The Committee on Rules shall select its own chairman. The Speaker shall not be eligible to membership on said Committee. All rules or parts thereof inconsistent with the foregoing resolutions are hereby repealed.


Resolution to Change House Rules Committee Membership 161 party discipline and used his power as chair to reward those in his party who carried out his will and punish others who did not. Later in his tenure as Speaker, the Progressive wing of the Republican Party became frustrated with Cannon’s ability to control the agenda and debate in the House. His own economic and social philosophy made Cannon unwilling to yield to the call for Progressive legislation supported by members of Congress from both parties. In response to their criticism he retorted, “I am damned tired of listening to all this babble for reform. America is a hell of a success.” Dissatisfaction with Cannon culminated in the introduction of a resolution by Progressive Republican George Norris of Nebraska on March 17, 1910. Norris and a small group of Progressive Republicans allied with Democrats in challenging Cannon’s power as Speaker. The proposal made by Norris was to remove the Speaker from the Rules Committee, which would effectively eliminate Cannon’s immeasurable power over the members of the House. Although Cannon was a master of House rules he opened the door for Norris when he tried to prevent a procedure that allowed committees to call up legislation of their choice, known as Calendar Wednesday. In response, Norris rose to offer his resolution as a matter of constitutional privilege. The Speaker’s supporters raised a point of order by arguing that the Norris resolution was not a matter of constitutional privilege. Cannon let the debate over the point of order continue for two days so that his supporters in the House could return from St. Patrick’s Day parades—and then he sustained it. Norris and the Progressives appealed his decision to the full chamber, which overturned the Speaker’s ruling by a vote of 182–162. The resolution was then adopted by a vote of 191–156. While Cannon remained Speaker, his power over the House effectively ended, and the power of the Speaker over party members also ended. Years later Norris remembered of his resolution, “I had carried it for a long time, certain, that in the flush of its power, the Cannon machine would overreach itself. The paper upon which I had written my resolution had become so tattered it scarcely hung together.”



CHAPTER

12

BIRCH BAYH'S RESOLUTION TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION TO PROVIDE FOR DIRECT POPULAR ELECTION OF THE PRESIDENT BY RANDALL E. ADKINS




42 $ Birch Bayh’s Resolution to Amend the Constitution to Provide for Direct Popular Election of the President* !

(1977) 1. What impact would amending the Constitution to elect the president and vice president by popular vote have on political parties? 2. How would elimination of the Electoral College system in favor of the popular election of the president and vice president affect how presidential candidates campaign for the Oval Office?

I

n the United States the president and vice president are selected by “electors,” public officials elected by voters to the position that chooses the president. Today, electors in forty-eight states are required to abide by the “unit rule,” that is, they must either by law or by political affiliation vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote within the state. The two remaining states, Maine and Nebraska, require electors to vote for the candidate who wins the popular vote within the congressional district that the elector represents, or, in the case of the atlarge electors, the candidate who wins the popular vote within the state. Critics of the Electoral College system argue that less populous states are better represented; that the unit rule disenfranchises those who did not vote for the candidate who won a state’s popular vote; and that, under the system, candidates who fail to win the popular vote still can be elected president. Since the 1960s the Electoral College’s most outspoken critic has been Democrat Birch Bayh, who represented Indiana in the U.S. Senate from 1963 until 1981. Bayh was chair of the Subcommittee on Constitutional

*Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 96th Congress, 1st Sess., March 27, 30, April 3, 9, 1979 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979).

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Birch Bayh’s Resolution to Amend the Constitution

Amendments and the principal architect of three proposals to amend the Constitution. The first, the Twenty-fifth Amendment, established the rules for presidential succession and disability, and the second, the Twenty-sixth Amendment, lowered the minimum age for voting to eighteen. The third was the Equal Rights Amendment, which was approved by Congress but was not ratified by the necessary number of states within the time limit imposed by the Constitution. Bayh’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments held its first hearing on Electoral College reform on February 28, 1966. Three years later, in 1969, the House of Representatives passed S.J. Res. 1, which proposed abolishing the Electoral College in favor of the direct election of the president and vice president by the voting public. That resolution was blocked by a filibuster in the Senate, but on January 10, 1977, Bayh brought a similar resolution, S.J. Res. 28, to the floor of the Ninetysixth Congress for a vote. Before doing so, his subcommittee held five days of hearings on Electoral College reform, during which members listened to thirty-eight witnesses and read additional statements by witnesses and other academic reports. This new resolution was approved by fifty-one senators; however, it failed to gain the two-third majority needed to approve an amendment to the Constitution. Since then, Congress has not held congressional hearings on reforming the Electoral College beyond hearings related to the potential effect of Ross Perot’s third-party candidacy on the outcome of the 1992 presidential election. Then in 2006, former Senator Bayh joined National Popular Vote, a coalition whose purpose is to effectively eliminate the Electoral College through a compact among state legislatures. Since the Constitution allows state legislatures to determine how they will select presidential electors, state legislators may bind themselves by statute to appoint electors who will vote for the candidate who wins the national popular vote. If any number of states that represent a majority of the Electoral College—270 votes—form such a coalition, then the direct election of the president becomes law without amending the Constitution. So far, the only state in which the National Popular Vote Plan has been passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor is Maryland (for updates see www.nationalpopularvote.com). Critics argue that such a plan will neutralize the federal and majoritarian elements of



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presidential selection, destabilize the two-party system, and increase the already skyrocketing cost of presidential campaigns because it would encourage presidential candidates to compete for votes in states that are otherwise dominated by one of the two major political parties. Many politicians and news columnists and editors, however, support the plan or other types of reform to the current system.

S.J. Res. 28 Proposing an amendment to the Constitution to provide for the direct popular election of the President and Vice President of the United States. Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress: “ARTICLE— “SECTION 1. The people of the several States and the District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall elect the President and Vice President. Each elector shall cast a single vote for two persons who shall have consented to the joining of their names as candidates for the offices of President and Vice President. No candidate shall consent to the joinder of his name with that o[f] more than one other person. “SEC. 2. The electors of President and Vice President in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature, except that for electors of President and Vice President the legislature of any State may prescribe less restrictive residence qualifications and for electors of President and Vice President the Congress may establish uniform residence qualifications. “SEC. 3. The persons joined as candidates for President and Vice President having the greatest number of votes shall be elected President and Vice President, if such number be at least 40 per centum of the whole number of votes cast.


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“If, after any such election, none of the persons joined as candidates for President and Vice President is elected pursuant to the preceding paragraph, a runoff election shall be held in which the choice of President and Vice President shall be made from the two pairs of persons joined as candidates for President and Vice President who received the highest numbers of votes cast in the election. The pair of persons joined as candidates for President and Vice President receiving the greater number of votes in such runoff election shall be elected President and Vice President. “SEC. 4. The times, places, and manner of holding such elections and entitlement to inclusion on the ballot shall be prescribed in each State by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations. The days for such elections shall be determined by Congress and shall be uniform throughout the United States. The Congress shall prescribed by law the times, places, and manner in which the results of such elections shall be ascertained and declared. No such election, other than a runoff election, shall be held later than the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and the results thereof shall be declared no later than the thirtieth day after the date on which the election occurs. “SEC. 5. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death, inability, or withdrawal of any candidate for President or Vice President before a President and Vice President have been elected, and for the case of the death of both the President-elect and Vice-President-elect. “SEC. 6. Sections 1 through 4 of this article shall take effect two years after the ratification of this article. “SEC. 7. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”


CHAPTER

13

"UNITED STATES V. CURTISS-WRIGHT EXPORT CORP" (1936) BY MICHAEL NELSON

Excerpted from Michael Nelson, THE EVOLVING PRESIDENCY: LANDMARK DOCUMENTS, 1787– 2010, 4TH EDITION (Washington: DC, CQ Press, 2008), pp. 157-161.



United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp.

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will depend upon the character of the office; the Myers decision, affirming the power of the President alone to make the removal is confined to purely executive officers; and as to officers of the kind here under consideration, we hold that no removal can be made during the prescribed term for which the officer is appointed, except for one or more of the causes named in the applicable statute. To the extent that, between the decision in the Myers case, which sustains the unrestrictable power of the President to remove purely executive officers, and our present decision that such power does not extend to an office such as that here involved, there shall remain a field of doubt, we leave such cases as may fall within it for future consideration and determination as they may arise. . . .

n ote 1. The provision of § 6 (d) of the act which authorizes the President to direct an investigation and report by the commission in relation to alleged violations of the anti-trust acts, is so obviously collateral to the main design of the act as not to detract from the force of this general statement as to the character of that body.

26 $ United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp.* !

(1936) nited states v. curtiss-wright export corp.

U

is arguably the Supreme Court’s most important decision concerning the president’s constitutional powers in foreign affairs. The expansive view of presidential authority that the decision endorsed is all the more remarkable because in 1935 and 1936 the Court had been unusually hostile to the New Deal domestic policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. (See Document 25, p. 151.) Indeed, the author of the Court’s opinion in the case, Justice George Sutherland, was one of the New Deal’s most ardent judicial foes. Yet, in United States v. Curtiss-Wright, Sutherland and his fellow justices promulgated a constitutional theory that echoed Alexander Hamilton’s Pacificus letters when they described “the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of *Go to http://laws.findlaw.com/us/299/304.html.


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international relations,” even though the Constitution did not explicitly confer such a role. (See Document 6, p. 50.) The Curtiss-Wright case was triggered by the government’s effort to limit the so-called Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay, which had taken 100,000 lives and jeopardized the peace of much of South America. On May 28, 1934, Congress passed a joint resolution granting the president power to prohibit, at his discretion, the sale of any or all American-made arms to the two nations. Later that day, Roosevelt issued an order banning all such sales. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation was indicted in 1936 for conspiring to sell military equipment to Bolivia in violation of the president’s order. The corporation and its officers responded by challenging in federal court the constitutionality of the law under which Roosevelt acted. They claimed that Congress had made an unconstitutional delegation of power to the president. In favoring the president’s position in the case, the Court could simply have decided that Congress’s delegation of power was constitutional. But in several recent rulings that overturned Roosevelt’s New Deal domestic programs, Sutherland and his conservative colleagues had accused Congress of delegating power to the president indiscriminately and improperly. The Court needed a new constitutional theory to justify the actions of the president and Congress in the CurtissWright case. Sutherland found his theory in the concept of sovereignty. The United States had been formed as a nation, he noted, by thirteen previously separate states. These states had domestic powers at the time they united and, in writing the Constitution, they had described which of these powers would be granted to the national government. But, Sutherland argued, because the states never had power to deal in international relations, the national government formed by the Constitution did not have to rely for its foreign affairs powers on any explicit constitutional authorization. Instead, as the plan of government for a nation, the Constitution implicitly granted the national government all the traditional sovereign powers that any nation wields, except as specifically limited by the document itself. The sovereign powers of the United States in international affairs, Sutherland continued, obviously reside in the president. “[H]e, not



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Congress, has the better opportunity of knowing the conditions which prevail in foreign countries, and especially is this true in time of war. He has his confidential sources of information. He has his agents in the form of diplomatic, consular, and other officials,” Sutherland wrote. Indeed, the Court’s opinion suggested that Roosevelt may not even have needed Congress’s permission to ban the sale of arms to Bolivia and Paraguay. RRR mr. justice sutherland delivered the opinion of the Court. . . . Whether, if the Joint Resolution had related solely to internal affairs it would be open to the challenge that it constituted an unlawful delegation of legislative power to the Executive, we find it unnecessary to determine. The whole aim of the resolution is to affect a situation entirely external to the United States, and falling within the category of foreign affairs. The determination which we are called to make, therefore, is whether the Joint Resolution, as applied to that situation, is vulnerable to attack under the rule that forbids a delegation of the law-making power. In other words, assuming (but not deciding) that the challenged delegation, if it were confined to internal affairs, would be invalid, may it nevertheless be sustained on the ground that its exclusive aim is to afford a remedy for a hurtful condition within foreign territory? It will contribute to the elucidation of the question if we first consider the differences between the powers of the federal government in respect of foreign or external affairs and those in respect of domestic or internal affairs. That there are differences between them, and that these differences are fundamental, may not be doubted. The two classes of powers are different, both in respect of their origin and their nature. The broad statement that the federal government can exercise no powers except those specifically enumerated in the Constitution, and such implied powers as are necessary and proper to carry into effect the enumerated powers, is categorically true only in respect of our internal affairs. In that field, the primary purpose of the Constitution was to carve from the general mass of legislative powers then possessed by the states such portions as it was thought desirable to vest in the federal government, leaving those not included in the enumeration still in the states. Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, 294. That this doctrine applies only to powers which the states had, is self evident. And since the states severally never possessed international powers, such powers could not have been carved from the mass of state powers but obviously were transmitted to the United States from some other source.


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During the colonial period, those powers were possessed exclusively by and were entirely under the control of the Crown. By the Declaration of Independence, “the Representatives of the United States of America” declared the United [not the several] Colonies to be free and independent states, and as such to have “full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” As a result of the separation from Great Britain by the colonies acting as a unit, the powers of external sovereignty passed from the Crown not to the colonies severally, but to the colonies in their collective and corporate capacity as the United States of America. Even before the declaration, the colonies were a unit in foreign affairs, acting through a common agency— namely the Continental Congress, composed of delegates from the thirteen colonies. That agency exercised the powers of war and peace, raised an army, created a navy, and finally adopted the Declaration of Independence. Rulers come and go; governments end and forms of government change; but sovereignty survives. A political society cannot endure without a supreme will somewhere. Sovereignty is never held in suspense. When, therefore, the external sovereignty of Great Britain in respect of the colonies ceased, it immediately passed to the Union. See Penhallow v. Doane, 3 Dall. 54, 80-81. That fact was given practical application almost at once. The treaty of peace, made on September 23, 1783, was concluded between his Brittanic Majesty and the “United States of America.” 8 Stat.—European Treaties—80. . . . It results that the investment of the federal government with the powers of external sovereignty did not depend upon the affirmative grants of the Constitution. The powers to declare and wage war, to conclude peace, to make treaties, to maintain diplomatic relations with other sovereignties, if they had never been mentioned in the Constitution, would have vested in the federal government as necessary concomitants of nationality. . . . Not only, as we have shown, is the federal power over external affairs in origin and essential character different from that over internal affairs, but participation in the exercise of the power is significantly limited. In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude; and Congress itself is powerless to invade it. As [John] Marshall said in his great argument of March 7, 1800, in the House of Representatives, “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.” Annals, 6th Cong., col. 613. . . .



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It is important to bear in mind that we are here dealing not alone with an authority vested in the President by an exertion of legislative power, but with such an authority plus the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of inter national relations—a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress, but which, of course, like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution. It is quite apparent that if, in the maintenance of our international relations, embarrassment—perhaps serious embarrassment—is to be avoided and success for our aims achieved, congressional legislation which is to be made effective through negotiation and inquiry within the international field must often accord to the President a degree of discretion and freedom from statutory restriction which would not be admissible were domestic affairs alone involved. Moreover, he, not Congress, has the better opportunity of knowing the conditions which prevail in foreign countries, and especially is this true in time of war. He has his confidential sources of information. He has his agents in the form of diplomatic, consular and other officials. Secrecy in respect of information gathered by them may be highly necessary, and the premature disclosure of it productive by harmful results. Indeed, so clearly is this true that the first President refused to accede to a request to lay before the House of Representatives the instructions, correspondence and documents relating to the negotiation of the Jay Treaty—a refusal the wisdom of which was recognized by the House itself and has never since been doubted. . . . The marked difference between foreign affairs and domestic affairs in this respect is recognized by both houses of Congress in the very form of their requisitions for information from the executive departments. In the case of every department except the Department of State, the resolution directs the official to furnish the information. In the case of the State Department, dealing with foreign affairs, the President is requested to furnish the information “if not incompatible with the public interest.” A statement that to furnish the information is not compatible with the public interest rarely, if ever, is questioned. When the President is to be authorized by legislation to act in respect of a matter intended to affect a situation in foreign territory, the legislator properly bears in mind the important consideration that the form of the President’s action—or, indeed, whether he shall act at all—may well depend, among other things, upon the nature of the confidential information which he has or may thereafter receive, or upon the effect which his action may have upon our foreign relations. This consideration, in connection with what we have already said on the subject, discloses the unwisdom of requiring Congress in this field of governmental power to lay down narrowly definite standards by which the President is to be governed. . . .


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Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Court-Packing” Address

We deem it unnecessary to consider, seriatim, the several clauses which are said to evidence the unconstitutionality of the Joint Resolution as involving an unlawful delegation of legislative power. It is enough to summarize by saying that, both upon principle and in accordance with precedent, we conclude there is sufficient warrant for the broad discretion vested in the President to determine whether the enforcement of the statute will have a beneficial effect upon the reestablishment of peace in the affected countries; whether he shall make proclamation to bring the resolution into operation; whether and when the resolution shall cease to operate and to make proclamation accordingly; and to prescribe limitations and exceptions to which the enforcement of the resolution shall be subject. . . .

27 $ Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Court-Packing” Address !

(1937)

O

n february 5, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, reacting to a long string of Supreme Court decisions that were hostile to the New Deal, asked Congress to add as many as six new positions to the Court, one for every sitting justice aged seventy or older who refused to retire. Roosevelt’s frustration with the Supreme Court was long-simmering. When he became president in 1933, the Court was dominated by conservatives. In 1935 and 1936 it overturned an unprecedented number of important federal laws that Roosevelt and Congress had enacted to combat the Great Depression, including the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Railway Pension Act. Other significant New Deal laws, such as the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act, seemed doomed to a similar fate as soon as they came before the justices. Privately, Roosevelt raged against the Court. Publicly, he was relatively quiet, fearing an adverse political reaction to any assault he might launch on the widely respected judicial branch. In 1936 Roosevelt ran a cautious campaign for reelection and was returned to office by the largest electoral vote majority in history, 523–8. Scarcely two


CHAPTER

14

THE FEDERAL JUDICIAL SYSTEM BY ROBERT A. CARP, RONALD STIDHAM AND KENNETH L. MANNING

Excerpted from Robert A. Carp, Ronald Stidham, Kenneth L. Manning, JUDICIAL PROCESS IN AMERICA, 8TH EDITION (Washington: DC, CQ Press, 2011), pp. 25-52.



chapter 2

The Federal Judicial System

George E.C. Hayes, left, Thurgood Marshall, center, and James M. Nabrit, right, outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 1954. They were part of the NAACP’s legal team that persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to declare segregation in public schools unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Thurgood Marshall was later appointed an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

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ne of the most important, most interesting, and most confusing features of the judiciary in the United States is the dual court system, that is, each level of government (state and national) has its own set of courts. Thus, there is a separate court system for each state, one for the District of Columbia, and one for the federal government. Some legal problems are resolved entirely in the state courts, whereas others are handled entirely in the federal courts. Still others may receive attention from both sets of tribunals, which sometimes results in friction. To simplify matters, we discuss the federal courts in this chapter and the state courts in Chapter 3. Because knowledge of the historical events that helped shape the national court system can shed light on the present judicial structure, our study of the federal judiciary begins with a description of the court system as it has evolved over more than two centuries. We first examine the three levels of the federal court system in the order in which they were established: the Supreme 25


26 Chapter 2

Court, the courts of appeals, and the district courts. The emphasis in our discussion of each level will be on policymaking roles and decision-making procedures. In a brief look at other federal courts we focus on the distinction between constitutional and legislative courts. Next, we discuss the individuals and organizations that provide staff support and administrative assistance in the daily operations of the courts. Our overview discussion concludes with a brief look at the workload of the federal courts.

The Historical Context Prior to ratification of the Constitution, the country was governed by the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles, almost all functions of the national government were vested in a single-chamber legislature called Congress. There was no separation of executive and legislative powers. The absence of a national judiciary was considered a major weakness of the Articles of Confederation. Both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, for example, saw the need for a separate judicial branch. Consequently, the delegates gathered at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 expressed widespread agreement that a national judiciary should be established. A good deal of disagreement arose, however, on the specific form that the judicial branch should take. The Constitutional Convention and Article 3 The first proposal presented to the Constitutional Convention was the Randolph Plan (also known as the Virginia Plan), which would have set up both a Supreme Court and inferior federal courts. Opponents of the Virginia Plan responded with the Paterson Plan (also known as the New Jersey Plan), which called for the creation of a single federal supreme tribunal. Supporters of the New Jersey Plan were especially disturbed by the idea of lower federal courts. They argued that the state courts could hear all cases in the first instance and that a right of appeal to the Supreme Court would be sufficient to protect national rights and provide uniform judgments throughout the country. The conflict between the states’ rights advocates and the nationalists was resolved by one of the many compromises that characterized the Constitutional Convention. The compromise is found in Article 3 of the Constitution, which begins, “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Thus, the conflict would be postponed until the new government was in operation.


The Federal Judicial System 27

The Judiciary Act of 1789 Once the Constitution was ratified, action on the federal judiciary came quickly. When the new Congress convened in 1789, its first major concern was judicial organization. Discussions of Senate Bill 1 involved many of the same participants and arguments that were involved in the Constitutional Convention’s debates on the judiciary. Once again, the question was whether lower federal courts should be created at all or whether federal claims should first be heard in state courts. Attempts to resolve this controversy split Congress into two distinct groups. One group, which believed that federal law should be adjudicated in the state courts first and by the U.S. Supreme Court only on appeal, expressed the fear that the new government would destroy the rights of the states. The other group of legislators, suspicious of the parochial prejudice of state courts, feared that litigants from other states and other countries would be dealt with unjustly. This latter group naturally favored a judicial system that included lower federal courts. The law that emerged from the debate, the Judiciary Act of 1789, set up a judicial system comprising a Supreme Court, consisting of a chief justice and five associate justices; three circuit courts, each with two justices of the Supreme Court and a district judge; and thirteen district courts, each presided over by one district judge. The power to create inferior federal courts, then, was immediately exercised. Congress created not one but two sets of lower courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court A famous jurist once said, “The Supreme Court of the United States is distinctly American in conception and function, and owes little to prior judicial institutions.”1 To understand what the framers of the Constitution envisioned for the Court, another American concept must be considered: the federal form of government. The founders provided for both a national government and state governments; the courts of the states were to be bound by federal laws. However, final interpretation of federal laws could not be left to a state court and certainly not to several state tribunals, whose judgments might disagree. Thus the Supreme Court must interpret federal legislation. Another of the founders’ intentions was for the federal government to act directly on individual citizens as well as on the states. The Supreme Court’s function in the federal system may be summarized as follows: In the most natural way, as the result of the creation of Federal law under a written constitution conferring limited powers, the Supreme Court of the United States came into being with its unique function. That court maintains the balance between State and Nation through the maintenance of the rights and duties of individuals.2


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Given the high court’s importance to the U.S. system of government, it was perhaps inevitable that the Court would evoke great controversy. A leading student of the Supreme Court said, Nothing in the Court’s history is more striking than the fact that, while its significant and necessary place in the Federal form of Government has always been recognized by thoughtful and patriotic men, nevertheless, no branch of the Government and no institution under the Constitution has sustained more continuous attack or reached its present position after more vigorous opposition.3

The Impact of Chief Justice Marshall John Marshall served as chief justice from 1801 to 1835, and although he was not the nation’s first chief justice, he dominated the Court to a degree unmatched by anyone who came after him. In effect, Marshall was the Court—perhaps because, in the words of one scholar, he “brought a first-class mind and a thoroughly engaging personality into second-class company.”4 Marshall’s dominance of the Court enabled him to initiate some major changes in the way opinions were presented. Before his tenure, the justices ordinarily wrote separate opinions (called seriatim opinions) in major cases. Under Marshall’s stewardship, the Court adopted the practice of handing down a single opinion, and the evidence shows that from 1801 to 1835 Marshall himself wrote almost half the opinions.5 In addition to bringing about changes in opinion-writing practices, Marshall used his powers to involve the Court in the policymaking process. Early in his tenure as chief justice, in Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Court asserted its power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional.6 This case had its beginnings in the presidential election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in his bid for reelection. Before leaving office in March 1801, Adams and the lame-duck Federalist Congress combined efforts to create several new federal judgeships. To fill these new positions Adams nominated, and the Senate confirmed, loyal Federalists. In addition, Adams named his outgoing secretary of state, John Marshall, to be the new chief justice of the United States. As secretary of state, Marshall had the job of delivering the commissions of the newly appointed judges. Time ran out before the new administration took over, however, and seventeen of the commissions were not delivered before Jefferson’s inauguration. Jefferson in turn ordered his secretary of state, James Madison, to abstain from delivering the remaining commissions. One of the disappointed nominees, William Marbury, and three of his colleagues, all confirmed as justices of the peace for the District of Columbia, decided



to ask the Supreme Court to force Madison to deliver their commissions. They relied on Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which granted the Supreme Court the authority to issue writs of mandamus—court orders commanding a public official to perform an official, nondiscretionary duty. The case placed Justice Marshall in an uncomfortable position. Some proposed that he disqualify himself because of his earlier involvement as secretary of state. There was also the question of the Court’s power. If Marshall were to grant the writ, Madison (under Jefferson’s orders) would be almost certain to refuse to deliver the commissions. The Supreme Court would then be powerless to enforce its order. However, if Marshall refused to grant the writ, Jefferson would win by default. The decision Marshall fashioned from this seemingly impossible predicament was evidence of sheer genius. He declared Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutional because it granted original jurisdiction to the Supreme Court in excess of that specified in Article 3 of the Constitution. Thus, the Court’s power to review and determine the constitutionality of acts of Congress was established. This decision is rightly seen as one of the single most important decisions the Supreme Court has ever handed down. A few years later the Court also claimed the right of judicial review of actions of state legislatures. During Marshall’s tenure it overturned more than a dozen state laws on constitutional grounds.7 Inferior federal and state courts also exercise the power to review the constitutionality of legislation. Judicial review is one of the features that set American courts apart from those in other countries. Judicial scholar Herbert Jacob says that “the United States is the outlier in the extraordinary power that its ordinary courts exercise in reviewing the constitutionality of legislation; France and Germany occupy intermediate positions, and the Japanese courts are the least active.”8 Constitutional challenges to legislation do occur in France and Germany, but ordinary judges sitting in ordinary courts do not exercise these powers. In Japan the Supreme Court, although possessing the power of constitutional review, rarely exercises it. Judicial review in the United Kingdom is basically of administrative actions.9 The Supreme Court as a Policymaker The Supreme Court’s role as a policymaker derives from the fact that it interprets the law. Public policy issues come before the Court in the form of legal disputes that must be resolved. Courts in any political system participate to some degree in the policymaking process because it is their job. Any judge faced with two or more interpretations and applications of a legislative act, executive order, or constitutional provision must choose among them


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because the controversy must be decided. And when the judge chooses, his or her interpretation becomes policy for the specific litigants. If the interpretation is accepted by the other judges, the judge has made policy for all jurisdictions in which that view prevails.10

In an article about the European Court of Justice, which serves the twenty-five member states of the European Union, judicial scholar Sally J. Kenney said that this court, like the U.S. Supreme Court, “is grappling with the most important policy matters of our time—separation of powers, the environment, communications, labor policy, affirmative action, sex discrimination, and human rights issues.”11 Fundamental human rights issues in the European Court of Justice are typically raised in the context of trade, however.12 An excellent example of U.S. Supreme Court policymaking may be found in the area of racial equality. In the late 1880s many states enacted laws requiring the separation of blacks and whites in public facilities. In 1890, for instance, Louisiana enacted a law requiring “separate but equal” railroad accommodations for blacks and whites. A challenge came two years later, when Homer Plessy, who was oneeighth black, protested the Louisiana law by refusing to move from a seat in the white car of a train traveling from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana. Arrested and charged with violating the statute, Plessy contended that the law was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), upheld the Louisiana statute.13 Thus the Court established the separate-but-equal policy that was to be in effect for about sixty years. During this period many states required that the races sit in different areas of buses, trains, terminals, and theaters; use different restrooms; and drink from different water fountains. Blacks were sometimes excluded from restaurants and public libraries. Perhaps most important, black students often had to attend inferior schools set aside for a black-only constituency. This body of laws and extralegal practices was unofficially referred to as Jim Crow, after the title of an anonymous nineteenth-century song. Separation of the races in public schools was contested in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954.14 Parents of black schoolchildren claimed that state laws requiring or permitting segregation deprived them of equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal and, therefore, segregation constitutes a denial of equal protection. In the Brown decision the Court laid to rest the separate-but-equal doctrine and established a policy of desegregated public schools. In an average year the Court decides, with signed opinions, between seventy and eighty cases. Thousands of other cases are disposed of with less than the full treatment. Thus the Court deals at length with a very select set of policy issues that have varied throughout its history.



In a democracy broad matters of public policy are, at least in theory, presumed to be left to the elected representatives of the people—not to judicial appointees with life terms. In principle, U.S. judges are not supposed to make policy, but in practice they cannot help but do so to some extent, as the examples discussed earlier demonstrate. The Supreme Court, however, differs from legislative and executive policymakers. Especially important is the fact that the Court has no self-starting device. The justices must wait for problems to be brought to them; there can be no judicial policymaking if there is no litigation. The president and members of Congress have no such constraints. Moreover, even the most assertive Supreme Court is limited to some extent by the actions of other policymakers, such as lower court judges, Congress, and the president. The Court depends on others to implement its decisions. The Supreme Court as Final Arbiter The Supreme Court has both original and appellate jurisdiction. Original jurisdiction means that a court has the power to hear a case for the first time. Appellate jurisdiction means that a higher court has the authority to review cases originally decided by a lower court. The Supreme Court is overwhelmingly an appellate court because most of its time is devoted to reviewing decisions of lower courts. The Supreme Court is the highest appellate tribunal in the country, and as such, it has the final word in the interpretation of the Constitution, acts of legislative bodies, and treaties—unless the Court’s decision is altered by a constitutional amendment or, in some instances, by an act of Congress. Since 1925 a device known as certiorari has allowed the high court to exercise discretion in deciding which cases it should review. Under this method a person may request Supreme Court review of a lower court decision; then the justices determine whether the request should be granted. In the October 2007 term the Court handed down decisions with full opinions in seventy-two cases.15 If review is granted, the Court issues a writ of certiorari, which is an order to the lower court to send up a complete record of the case. When certiorari is denied, the decision of the lower court stands. The Supreme Court at Work The formal session of the Supreme Court lasts from the first Monday in October until the business of the term is completed, usually in late June or July. Since 1935 the Supreme Court has had its own building in Washington, D.C. The imposing five-story marble building, which stands across from the Capitol, has the words


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“Equal Justice Under Law” carved above the entrance. Formal sessions are held in a large courtroom that seats three hundred people. At the front of the courtroom is the bench where the justices are seated. When the Court is in session, the chief justice, followed by the eight associate justices (the number since 1869) in order of seniority (length of continuous service on the Court), enters through the purple draperies behind the bench and takes a seat. Seats are arranged according to seniority, with the chief justice in the center, the senior associate justice on the chief justice’s right, the second-ranking associate justice on the left, and continuing alternately in descending order of seniority. Near the courtroom are the conference room, where the justices decide cases, and the chambers that contain offices for the justices and their staffs. The Court’s term is divided into sittings, each lasting approximately two weeks, during which the justices meet in open session and hold internal conferences, and recesses, during which the justices work behind closed doors to consider cases and write opinions. The seventy to eighty cases per term that receive the Court’s full treatment follow a fairly routine pattern, which is described below. Oral Argument. Oral arguments are generally scheduled on Monday through Wednesday during the sittings. The sessions run from 10:00 a.m. to noon and from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Because the procedure is not a trial or the original hearing of a case, no jury is assembled and no witnesses are called. Instead, the two opposing attorneys present their arguments to the justices. The general practice is to allow thirty minutes for each side, although the Court may decide that additional time is necessary. The Court can normally hear four cases in one day. Attorneys presenting oral arguments are frequently interrupted with probing questions from the justices. The oral argument is considered very important by both attorneys and justices because it is the only stage in the process that allows such personal exchanges. The Conference. On Fridays preceding the two-week sittings the Court holds conferences; during sittings it holds conferences on Wednesday afternoon and all day Friday. At the Wednesday meeting the justices discuss the cases argued on Monday. At the longer conference on Friday they discuss the cases that were argued on Tuesday and Wednesday, plus any other matters that need to be considered. The most important of these other matters are the certiorari petitions. Before the Friday conference, each justice is given a list of the cases that will be discussed. The conference begins at about 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. and runs until 5:30 or 6:00 p.m. As the justices enter the conference room, they shake hands with one another and take their seats around a rectangular table. They meet behind locked doors, and no official record is kept of the discussions. The chief justice presides



over the conference and offers an opinion first in each case. The other justices follow in descending order of seniority. At one time a formal vote was then taken in reverse order (with the junior justice voting first); today the justices usually indicate their view during the discussion, making a formal vote unnecessary. A quorum for a decision on a case is six members; obtaining a quorum is seldom difficult. Cases are sometimes decided by fewer than nine justices because of vacancies, illnesses, or nonparticipation resulting from possible conflicts of interest. Supreme Court decisions are made by a majority vote. In the event of a tie, the lower court decision is upheld. Opinion Writing. After a tentative decision has been reached in conference, the next step is to assign an individual justice to write the Court’s opinion. The chief justice, if voting with the majority, either writes the opinion or assigns it to another justice who voted with the majority. When the chief justice votes with the minority, the most senior justice in the majority makes the assignment. After the conference the justice who will write the Court’s opinion begins work on an initial draft. Other justices may work on the case by writing alternative opinions. The completed opinion is circulated to justices in both the majority and the minority groups. The writer seeks to persuade justices originally in the minority to change their votes and to keep his or her majority group intact. A bargaining process occurs, and the wording of the opinion may be changed to satisfy other justices or obtain their support. A deep division in the Court makes it difficult to achieve a clear, coherent opinion and may even result in a shift in votes or in another justice’s opinion becoming the Court’s official ruling. In most cases a single opinion does obtain majority support, although few rulings are unanimous. Those who disagree with the opinion of the Court are said to dissent. A dissent does not have to be accompanied by an opinion, but in recent years it usually has been. Whenever more than one justice dissents, each may write an opinion or all may join in a single opinion. On occasion a justice will agree with the Court’s decision but differ in his or her reason for reaching that conclusion. Such a justice may write what is called a concurring opinion. A good example is Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s concurring opinion in Lawrence v. Texas (2003).16 In that case the majority relied on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to declare a Texas statute banning same-sex sodomy unconstitutional. Justice O’Connor agreed with the majority that the statute should be struck down, but based her conclusion on the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. As sodomy between opposite-sex partners is not a crime in Texas, the state treats the same conduct differently based solely on


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the sex of the participants. According to Justice O’Connor, that violates the Equal Protection Clause. An opinion labeled “concurring and dissenting” agrees with part of a Court ruling but disagrees with other parts. Finally, the Court occasionally issues a per curiam opinion—an unsigned opinion that is usually brief. Such opinions are often used when the Court accepts the case for review but gives it less than full treatment. For example, it may decide the case without benefit of oral argument and issue a per curiam opinion to explain the disposition of the case.

The U.S. Courts of Appeals The courts of appeals have been described as “perhaps the least noticed of the regular constitutional courts.”17 They receive less media coverage than the Supreme Court, in part because their activities are simply not as dramatic. However, one should not assume that the courts of appeals are unimportant to the judicial system. Recall that in its 2007 term the Supreme Court handed down decisions with full opinions in only seventy-two cases, which means that the courts of appeals are the courts of last resort for most appeals in the federal court system. Originating in the Judiciary Act of 1789 as three circuit courts, the courts making up the intermediate level of the federal judiciary evolved into courts of appeals in 1948. Despite this official name, they continue to be referred to colloquially as circuit courts. Although these intermediate appellate courts have been headed at one time or another by circuit judges, courts of appeals judges, district judges, and Supreme Court justices, they now are staffed by 166 authorized courts of appeals judges. Nine regional courts of appeals, each encompassing several states, were created in 1891. Another, covering the District of Columbia, was absorbed into the system after 1893. Next came the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which was carved from the Eighth Circuit in 1929. In 1981, following a long battle during which many civil rights activists expressed the fear that a split might negate gains they had made acting through the courts, the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit was carved from the Fifth Circuit.18 The courts of appeals in each of the twelve regional circuits are responsible for reviewing cases appealed from federal district courts (and in some cases from administrative agencies) within the boundaries of the circuit. Figure 2–1 depicts the appellate and district court boundaries and indicates the states contained in each. A specialized appellate court came into existence in 1982, when Congress established the Federal Circuit, a jurisdictional instead of a geographic circuit. The U.S.



District and Appellate Court Boundaries

NOTE: The large numerals indicate the Courts of Appeals; the dashed lines indicate district boundaries. Number and composition of circuits set forth by 28 U.S.C. § 41.

SOURCE: Administrative Office of the United States Courts, www.uscourts.gov/images/CircuitMap.pdf.

figure 2-1

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Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was created by consolidating the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. The Review Function of the Courts of Appeals As one modern-day student of the judiciary has noted, The distribution of labor among the Supreme Court and the Courts of Appeals, implicit in the Judiciary Act of 1925, has matured into fully differentiated functions for federal appellate courts. Substantively, the Supreme Court has become more and more a constitutional tribunal. Courts of Appeals concentrate on statutory interpretation, administrative review, and error correction in masses of routine adjudications.19

Although the Supreme Court has had discretionary control of its docket since 1925, the courts of appeals still have no such luxury. Instead, their docket depends on how many and what types of cases are appealed to them. Most of the cases reviewed by the courts of appeals originate in the federal district courts. Litigants disappointed with the lower court decision may appeal the case to the court of appeals of the circuit in which the federal district court is located. The appellate courts have also been given authority to review the decisions of certain administrative agencies. Well over a thousand administrative law judges now perform judicial functions within the executive branch of the federal government. In adjudicating cases before them they conduct formal trial-type hearings, make findings of fact and law, apply agency regulations, and issue decisions.20 This type of case enters the federal judicial system at the court of appeals level instead of at the federal district court level. Because the courts of appeals have no control over which cases are brought to them, they deal with both routine and highly important matters. At one end of the spectrum are frivolous appeals or claims that have no substance and little or no chance for success. Such appeals are no doubt encouraged by the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that assistance of counsel for first appeals should be granted to all indigents who have been convicted of a crime.21 Occasionally a claim is successful, which then motivates other prisoners to appeal. At the other end of the spectrum are the cases that raise major questions of public policy and evoke strong disagreement. Decisions by the courts of appeals in such cases are likely to establish policy for society as a whole, not just for the specific litigants. Civil liberties, reapportionment, religion, and education cases provide good examples of the kinds of disputes that may affect all citizens. There are two purposes of review in the courts of appeals. The first is error correction. Judges in the various circuits are called on to monitor the performance of federal district courts and federal agencies and to supervise their application and



interpretation of national and state laws. In doing so, the courts of appeals do not seek out new factual evidence but instead examine the record of the lower court for errors. In the process of correcting errors, the courts of appeals also settle disputes and enforce national law. The second function is sorting out and developing those few cases worthy of Supreme Court review. The circuit judges tackle the legal issues earlier than the Supreme Court justices do and may help shape what they consider review-worthy claims. Judicial scholars have found that the second hearing of appealed cases sometimes differs from the first. The Courts of Appeals as Policymakers The Supreme Court’s role as a policymaker derives from the fact that it interprets the law; the same holds true for the courts of appeals. The scope of the courts of appeals’ policymaking role takes on added importance because they are the courts of last resort in the vast majority of cases. A study of three circuits, for example, found that the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed only nineteen of the nearly four thousand decisions of those tribunals.22 As an example of the impact of circuit court judges, consider a decision in a case involving the Fifth Circuit. For several years the University of Texas Law School granted preference to black and Mexican American applicants to increase the enrollment of these classes of minority students. This practice was challenged in a federal district court on the ground that it discriminated against white and nonpreferred minority applicants in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. On March 18, 1996, a panel of Fifth Circuit judges ruled in Hopwood v. Texas that the Fourteenth Amendment does not permit the school to discriminate in this way and that race may not be used as a factor in law school admissions.23 The U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari in the case, thus leaving it the law of the land in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the states constituting the Fifth Circuit.24 However, the Supreme Court did tackle the use of race as a factor in law school and undergraduate admissions in two cases decided during its 2002–2003 term. The cases, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, are discussed more fully in Chapter 13. A major difference in policymaking by the Supreme Court and by the courts of appeals should be noted. Whereas there is one high court for the entire country, each court of appeals covers only a specific region. Thus the courts of appeals are more likely to make policy on a regional basis. Still, as evidenced by the Hopwood case, they are part of the federal judicial system and “participate in both national and local policy networks, their decisions becoming regional law unless intolerable to the Justices.”25


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The Courts of Appeals at Work The courts of appeals do not have the same degree of discretion as the Supreme Court to decide whether to accept a case for review. Nevertheless, circuit judges have developed methods for using their time as efficiently as possible. Screening. During the screening stage the judges decide whether to give an appeal a full review or to dispose of it in some other way. The docket may be reduced to some extent by consolidating similar claims into single cases, a process that also results in a uniform decision. In deciding which cases can be disposed of without oral argument, the courts of appeals increasingly rely on law clerks or staff attorneys. These people read petitions and briefs and then submit recommendations to the judges. As a result, many cases are disposed of without reaching the oral argument stage. In the twelve-month period ending September 30, 2008, for example, almost 70 percent of the appeals were terminated without oral argument.26 Three-Judge Panels. Those cases given the full treatment are normally considered by panels of three judges rather than by all the judges in the circuit. This means that several cases can be heard at the same time by different three-judge panels, often sitting in different cities throughout the circuit. Panel assignments are typically made by the circuit executive or someone else, and then a clerk assigns cases blindly to the panels. Because all the circuits now contain more than three judges, the panels change frequently so that the same three judges do not sit together permanently. Regardless of the method used to determine panel assignments, one fact remains clear: A decision reached by a majority of a three-judge panel does not necessarily reflect the views of a majority of the judges in the circuit. En Banc Proceedings. Occasionally, different three-judge panels within the same circuit may reach conflicting decisions in similar cases. To resolve such conflicts and to promote circuit unanimity, federal statutes provide for an en banc procedure, in which all the circuit’s judges sit together on a panel and decide a case. The exception to this general rule occurs in the large Ninth Circuit, where assembling all the judges becomes too cumbersome. There, en banc panels normally consist of eleven judges. The en banc procedure may also be used when the case concerns an issue of extraordinary importance, as in the famous Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District decision in 1969.27 That case arose when several students attended school wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. After being expelled because of their actions, they filed suit against the



school district in a federal district court. The federal trial court ruled in favor of the school district. When the case was appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in 1967, the en banc procedure was used because of the important First Amendment issue raised. After the circuit court split 3–3, the case was reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the wearing of black armbands was a symbolic expression of views entitled to First Amendment protection. The en banc procedure may be requested by the litigants or by the judges of the court. The circuits themselves have discretion to decide if and how the procedure will be used. Clearly, its use is the exception, not the rule. Oral Argument. Cases that have survived the screening process and have not been settled by the litigants are scheduled for oral argument. Attorneys for each side are given a short amount of time (in some cases no more than ten minutes) to discuss the points made in their written briefs and to answer questions from the judges. The Decision. Following the oral argument, the judges may confer briefly and, if they are in agreement, may announce their decision immediately. Otherwise, a decision will be announced only after the judges confer at greater length. Following the conference, some decisions will be announced with a brief order or per curiam opinion of the court. A small portion of decisions will be accompanied by a longer, signed opinion and perhaps even dissenting and concurring opinions. Recent years have seen a general decrease in the number of published opinions, although circuits vary in their practices.

U.S. District Courts The U.S. district courts represent the basic point of input for the federal judicial system. Although some cases are later taken to a court of appeals or perhaps even to the Supreme Court, most federal cases never move beyond the U.S. trial courts. In terms of sheer numbers of cases handled, the district courts are the workhorses of the federal judiciary. However, their importance extends beyond simply disposing of a large number of cases. Current Organization of the District Courts The practice of respecting state boundaries in establishing district court jurisdictions began in 1789 and has been periodically reaffirmed by statutes ever since. As the country grew, new district courts were created. Congress eventually began to divide some states into more than one district. California, New York, and Texas


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have the most, with four each. Other than consistently honoring state lines, the organization of district constituencies appears to follow no rational plan. Size and population vary widely from district to district. Over the years, a court was added for the District of Columbia, and several territories have been served by district courts. U.S. district courts now serve the fifty states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Congress often provides further organizational detail by creating divisions within a district. In doing this, the national legislature precisely lists the counties included in a particular division as well as the cities in which court will be held. As indicated, the original district courts were each assigned one judge. With the growth in population and litigation, Congress has periodically added judgeships to the districts, bringing the current total to 678. The Southern District of New York, which includes Manhattan and the Bronx, currently has twenty-eight judges and is the largest. Because each federal district court is normally presided over by a single judge, several trials may be in session at various cities within the district at any given time. The District Courts as Trial Courts Congress established the district courts as the trial courts of the federal judicial system and gave them original jurisdiction over virtually all cases. They are the only federal courts in which attorneys examine and cross-examine witnesses. The factual record is thus established at this level. Subsequent appeals of the trial court decision will focus on correcting errors, not on reconstructing the facts. The task of determining the facts in a case often falls to a jury, a group of citizens from the community who serve as impartial arbiters of the facts and apply the law to the facts. The Constitution guarantees the right to a jury trial in criminal cases in the Sixth Amendment and the same right in civil cases in the Seventh Amendment. The right can be waived, however, in which case the judge becomes the arbiter of questions of fact as well as matters of law. Such trials are referred to as bench trials. Two types of juries are associated with federal district courts. The grand jury is a group of men and women convened to determine whether probable cause exists to believe that a person has committed the federal crime of which he or she has been accused. Grand jurors meet periodically to hear charges brought by the U.S. attorney. Petit jurors are chosen at random from the community to hear evidence and determine whether a defendant in a civil trial has liability or whether a defendant in a criminal trial is guilty or not guilty. Federal rules call for twelve jurors in criminal cases but permit fewer in civil cases. The federal district courts generally use six-person juries in civil cases.



Norm Enforcement by the District Courts Some students of the judiciary make a distinction between norm enforcement and policymaking by the courts.28 Trial courts are viewed as engaging primarily in norm enforcement, whereas appellate courts are seen as having greater opportunity to make policy. Norm enforcement is closely tied to the administration of justice, because all nations develop standards considered essential to a just and orderly society. Societal norms are embodied in statutes, administrative regulations, prior court decisions, and community traditions. Criminal statutes, for example, incorporate concepts of acceptable and unacceptable behavior into law. A judge deciding a case concerning an alleged violation of that law is basically practicing norm enforcement. Because cases of this type rarely allow the judge to escape the strict restraints of legal and procedural requirements, he or she has little chance to make new law or develop new policy. In civil cases, too, judges are often confined to norm enforcement; opportunities for policymaking are infrequent. Rather, such litigation generally arises from a private dispute whose outcome is of interest only to the parties in the suit. Policymaking by the District Courts The district courts also play a policymaking role. One leading judicial scholar explains how this function differs from norm enforcement: When they make policy, the courts do not exercise more discretion than when they enforce community norms. The difference lies in the intended impact of the decision. Policy decisions are intended to be guideposts for future actions; norm-enforcement decisions are aimed at the particular case at hand.29

The discretion that a federal trial judge exercises should not be overlooked, however. As Americans have become more litigation-conscious, disputes that were once resolved informally are now more likely to be decided in a court of law. The courts find themselves increasingly involved in domains once considered private. What does this mean for the federal district courts? According to one study, “These new areas of judicial involvement tend to be relatively free of clear, precise appellate court and legislative guidelines; and as a consequence the opportunity for trial court jurists to write on a clean slate, that is, to make policy, is formidable.”30 In other words, when the guidelines are not well established, district judges have a great deal of discretion to set policy. Three-Judge District Courts From time to time Congress has passed legislation permitting certain types of cases to be heard before a three-judge district court rather than a single trial


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judge. Such courts are created on an ad hoc basis and must include at least one judge from the federal district court and at least one judge from the court of appeals. Appeals of decisions of three-judge district courts go directly to the Supreme Court. At one time Congress provided that private citizens challenging the constitutionality of state or federal statutes and seeking injunctions to prohibit their further enforcement could bring the case before a three-judge district court. That is what happened in the abortion case of Roe v. Wade.31 Jane Roe (a pseudonym), a single, pregnant woman, challenged the constitutionality of the Texas anti-abortion statute and sought an injunction to prohibit further enforcement of the law. The case was initially heard by a three-judge court consisting of district judges Sarah T. Hughes and W. N. Taylor and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge Irving L. Goldberg. The three-judge district court held the Texas abortion statute invalid but declined to issue an injunction against its enforcement on the ground that a federal intrusion into the state’s affairs was not warranted. Roe then appealed the denial of the injunction directly to the Supreme Court.

Constitutional Courts, Legislative Courts, and Courts of Specialized Jurisdiction The Judiciary Act of 1789 established the three levels of the federal court system in existence today. Periodically, however, Congress has exercised its power, based on Article 3 and Article 1 of the Constitution, to create other federal courts. Courts established under Article 3 are known as constitutional courts, and those created under Article 1 are called legislative courts. The former handles the bulk of litigation in the system and, for this reason, will remain the focus of this discussion. The Supreme Court, courts of appeals, and federal district courts are constitutional courts. The trial and appellate military courts, created under authority found in Article 1, section 8, of the Constitution, “To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court” and “To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” are good examples of legislative courts. The two types of courts may be further distinguished by their functions. Legislative courts, unlike their constitutional counterparts, often have administrative and quasi-legislative as well as judicial duties. Another difference is that legislative courts are often created to help administer a specific congressional statute. For example, more than 200 immigration judges in more than 50 immigration courts throughout the United States adjudicate cases pursuant to the Immigration Reform



and Control Act of 1986 and the Immigration Act of 1990. Their decisions are appealable to the Board of Immigration Appeals, a 15-member administrative body housed in the U.S. Department of Justice. All board decisions are subject to review in the federal courts.32 Constitutional courts are tribunals established to handle litigation. Finally, the constitutional and legislative courts vary in their degree of independence from the other two branches of government. Article 3 (constitutional court) judges serve during a period of good behavior, or what amounts to life tenure. Because Article 1 (legislative court) judges have no constitutional guarantee of good-behavior tenure, Congress may set specific terms of office for them. Judges of Article 3 courts are also constitutionally protected from salary reductions while in office. Those who serve as judges of legislative courts have no such protection. Bankruptcy courts provide a good example. The bankruptcy judges are appointed for fourteen-year terms by the court of appeals for the circuit in which the district is located and have their salaries set by Congress. A court of specialized jurisdiction that has garnered much attention since September 11, 2001, is the foreign intelligence surveillance court. Created in 1978 by passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, this court had its powers expanded when the USA Patriot Act was passed in October 2001.33 The court consists of eleven federal district judges appointed by the chief justice of the United States, with no fewer than three of the judges residing within twenty miles of the District of Columbia. It was created for the purpose of passing on requests for surveillance and physical searches aimed at foreign powers and their agents.34 Some have referred to it as a secret court because the records of its proceedings are not made public but instead are kept confidential under procedures developed by the chief justice, the attorney general, and the CIA director. There is also an appeals panel consisting of three district or court of appeals judges appointed by the chief justice. Their task is to hear appeals from denials of applications for surveillance and physical searches.

Administrative and Staff Support in the Federal Judiciary The daily operation of federal courts requires a myriad of personnel. Although judges are the most visible actors in the judicial system, a large supporting cast is also needed to perform the tasks for which judges are unskilled or unsuited or for which they simply do not have adequate time. Some members of the support team, such as law clerks, may work specifically for one judge. Others—for example, U.S. magistrate judges—work for a particular court. Still others may be employees of


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an agency serving the entire judicial system, such as the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. United States Magistrate Judges In an effort to help federal district judges deal with increased workloads, Congress passed the Federal Magistrates Act in 1968. This legislation created the office of U.S. magistrate to replace the U.S. commissioners, who had performed limited duties for the federal trial courts for a number of years. In 1990, with passage of the Judicial Improvements Act, their title was changed to U.S. magistrate judge. Magistrate judges are formally appointed by the judges of the district court for eight-year terms of office, although they can be removed for “good cause” before the term expires. The magistrate judge system constitutes a structure that responds to each district court’s specific needs and circumstances. Within guidelines set by the Federal Magistrates Acts of 1968, 1976, and 1979, the judges in each district court establish the duties and responsibilities of their magistrate judges. Most significantly, the 1979 legislation permits a magistrate judge, with the consent of the involved parties, to conduct all proceedings in a jury or nonjury civil matter, to enter a judgment in the case, and to conduct a trial of persons accused of misdemeanors (less serious offenses than felonies) committed within the district, provided the defendants consent. In other words, Congress has given federal district judges the authority to expand the scope of magistrate judges’ participation in the judicial process. Because each district has its own particular needs, a magistrate judge’s specific duties may vary from one district to the next and from one judge to another. The decision to delegate responsibilities to a magistrate judge is still made by the district judge, so that a magistrate judge’s participation in the processing of cases may be narrower than that permitted by statute. Law Clerks More than two thousand law clerks now work for federal judges, and more than six hundred serve bankruptcy judges and U.S. magistrate judges.35 In addition to the law clerks hired by individual judges, all appellate courts and some district courts hire staff law clerks who serve the entire court. A law clerk’s duties vary according to the preferences of the judge for whom he or she works. They also vary according to the type of court. Law clerks for federal district judges often serve primarily as research assistants, spending a good deal of time examining the various motions filed in civil and criminal cases. They review



each motion, noting the issues and the positions of the parties involved, then research important points raised in the motions and prepare written memoranda for the judges. Because their work is devoted to the earliest stages of the litigation process, law clerks may have a substantial amount of contact with attorneys and witnesses. Law clerks at this level may also be involved in the initial drafting of opinions. As one federal district judge said, “I even allow my law clerks to write memorandum opinions. I first tell him what I want and then he writes it up. Sometimes I sign it without changing a word.”36 At the appellate level, the law clerk becomes involved in a case first by researching the issues of law and fact presented by an appeal. Saving the judge’s time is important. Consider the courts of appeals. These courts do not have the same discretion that the U.S. Supreme Court has to accept or reject a case. Nevertheless, the courts of appeals now use certain screening devices to differentiate between cases that can be handled quickly and those that require more time and effort. Law clerks are an integral part of this screening process. Beginning around 1960, some courts of appeals began to use staff law clerks. Staff clerks work for the entire court as opposed to a particular justice, and began to be used primarily because of the rapid increase in the number of pro se matters (generally speaking, those involving indigents) coming before the courts of appeals. Today some district courts also have pro se law clerks for handling prisoner petitions. In some circuits the staff law clerks deal only with pro se matters; in others they review nearly all cases on the court’s docket. As a result of their review, a truncated process may be followed, that is, no oral argument or full briefing is made. A number of cases are scheduled for oral argument, and the clerk may be called on to assist the judge in preparing for it. Intensive analysis of the record by judges before oral argument is not always possible. Judges seldom have time to do more than scan pertinent portions of the record called to their attention by law clerks. As one judicial scholar aptly noted, “To prepare for oral argument, all but a handful of circuit judges rely upon bench memoranda prepared by their law clerks, plus their own notes from reading briefs.”37 Once a decision has been reached by an appellate court, the law clerk frequently participates in writing the order that accompanies the decision. The clerk’s participation generally consists of drafting a preliminary opinion or order pursuant to the judge’s directions. A law clerk may also be asked to edit or check citations in an opinion written by the judge. Because the work of the law clerk for a Supreme Court justice roughly parallels that of a clerk in the other appellate courts, all aspects of their responsibility do not need to be restated here. However, a few important points about Supreme


46 Chapter 2

Court law clerks deserve mention. Clerks play an indispensable role in helping justices decide which cases should be heard. At the suggestion of Justice Lewis Powell in 1972, a majority of the Court’s members began to participate in a “certpool”; the justices pool their clerks, divide up all filings, and circulate a single clerk’s certiorari memo to all those participating in the pool.38 The memo summarizes the facts of the case, the questions of law presented, and the recommended course of action—whether the case should be granted a full hearing, denied, or dismissed. Currently, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice John Paul Stevens are the only members of the Court that do not participate in the certpool. Nevertheless, Justice Stevens finds this initial reading of certiorari petitions by the law clerks invaluable. “They examine them all and select a small minority that they believe I should read myself. As a result, I do not even look at the papers in over 80 percent of the cases that are filed.”39 Once the justices have voted to hear a case, the law clerks, like their counterparts in the courts of appeals, prepare bench memoranda that the justices may use during oral argument. Finally, law clerks for Supreme Court justices, like those who serve courts of appeals judges, help to draft opinions. Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts The administration of the federal judicial system as a whole is managed by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which essentially functions as “the judiciary’s housekeeping agency.”40 Since its creation in 1939, it has handled everything from distributing supplies and negotiating with other government agencies for court accommodations in federal buildings to maintaining judicial personnel records and collecting data on cases in the federal courts. The Administrative Office also serves a staff function for the Judicial Conference of the United States, the central administrative policymaking organization of the federal judicial system. In addition to providing statistical information to the conference’s many committees, the Administrative Office acts as a reception center and clearinghouse for information and proposals directed to the Judicial Conference. Closely related to this staff function is the Administrative Office’s role as liaison for both the federal judicial system and the Judicial Conference. The Administrative Office serves as advocate for the judiciary in its dealings with Congress, the executive branch, professional groups, and the general public. Especially important is its representative role before Congress, where, along with concerned judges, it presents the judiciary’s budget proposals, requests for additional judgeships, suggestions for changes in court rules, and other key measures.



The Federal Judicial Center The Federal Judicial Center, created in 1967, is the federal courts’ agency for continuing education and research. Its duties fall generally into three categories: (1) conducting research on the federal courts, (2) making recommendations to improve the administration and management of the federal courts, and (3) developing educational and training programs for personnel of the judicial branch. Since its inception, judges have benefited from orientation sessions and other educational programs organized by the Federal Judicial Center. In recent years, magistrate judges, bankruptcy judges, and administrative personnel have also been the recipients of educational programs. The Federal Judicial Center’s extensive use of videos and satellite technology enables it to reach large numbers of people.

Federal Court Workload Table 2–1 provides a look at the changing workload of the federal district courts for the fiscal years 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2008. Civil cases, which far outnumber criminal cases in the United States, increased by nearly 4 percent between 2007 and 2008. This increase came on the heels of an 8 percent decline from 2004–2007. Furthermore, the number of civil cases terminated in 2008 was more than 2 percent less than the number terminated the previous year. Criminal case filings in 2008 were up more than 3.5 percent from the previous year following a decline in criminal case filings between 2004 and 2007. According

ta b l e 2 -1

J udicial Caseload Indicators for 12-Month Periods Ending September 30, 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2008: U.S. District Courts

Civil Cases 1999 2004 2007 2008

Filed Terminated Pending

% Change since 2007

260,271 272,526 249,381

281,338 252,761 284,696

257,507 239,678 265,443

267,257 234,571 298,129

3.8 -2.1 12.3

59,923 56,511 42,966

71,022 64,621 65,900

68,413 67,851 73,418

70,896 70,629 73,685

3.6 4.1 0.4

Criminal Cases


SOURCE: Compiled from data in Judicial Business of the United States Courts 2008. Available at www.uscourts.gov/ Press_Releases/2009/2008Caseloadindicators.pdf.


48 Chapter 2

to the Administrative Office of United States Courts, immigration cases increased 27 percent, with improper reentry by an alien accounting for 73 percent of all immigration cases.41 Not surprisingly, 72 percent of all the immigration cases were filed in the five southwestern border districts.42 Table 2–2 presents judicial caseload indicators for the regional courts of appeals for the fiscal years 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2008. Filings in these tribunals increased nearly 5 percent between 2007 and 2008, with increases in both civil and criminal appeals. Of even greater significance is the fact that appeals of administrative agency decisions rose by 12 percent from 2007 to 2008 after declining for two consecutive years.43 The Administrative Office of United States Courts attributes this increase primarily to challenges to Board of Immigration Appeals decisions which rose by thirteen percent.44 Overall, when looking at the number of cases filed, terminated, and pending, it is obvious that both the trial and appellate courts are stretched to their limits with heavy caseloads. Furthermore, their caseloads vary widely in nature. Table 2–3 presents caseload data for the U.S. Supreme Court. The total number of cases on the High Court’s docket increased steadily between 2004 and 2006 before declining slightly in the October 2007 term. The total number of paid (those for which the Court’s filing fee has been paid and all the required materials have been provided), pauper (those brought by indigent people for whom the filing fee and requirement of multiple copies are waived by the Court), and original cases (those being heard by the Court in the first instance) on the docket for the 2007 term stood at 9,602 cases. Perhaps the key point to remember about the workload of the Supreme Court is that the justices themselves have discretion to decide which cases merit the Court’s full attention. As a result, the number of cases argued before the Court has declined ta b l e 2 -2

J udicial Caseload Indicators for 12-Month Periods Ending September 30, 1999, 2004, 2007, and 2008: U.S. Courts of Appeals

1999 2004 2007 2008


54,693 54,088 42,225

62,762 56,381 51,226

58,410 62,846 51,063

61,104 59,096 53,071

% Change since 2007

4.6 -6.0 3.9

SOURCE: Compiled from data in Judicial Business of the United States Courts 2008. Available at www.uscourts.gov/ Press_Releases/2009/2008Caseloadindicators.pdf. NOTE: Excludes the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.


The Federal Judicial System 49 ta b l e 2 -3 Cases

Paid cases Pauper cases Original cases Total Cases argued Cases disposed of by full opinions

ases on the Docket, Argued, and Disposed of by Full Opinions in C the U.S. Supreme Court, October Terms 2003–2007 2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2,058 6,818 6 8,882 91 89

2,041 6,543 4 8,588 87 85

2,025 7,575 8 9,608 90 82

2,069 8,181 6 10,256 78 74

1,969 7,628 5 9,602 75 72

SOURCE: Compiled from data in Judicial Business of the United States Courts 2008. Available at www.uscourts.gov/ judbus2008/appendices/A01Sep08.pdf.

rather dramatically over the years. In the 2007 term only 75 cases were argued, and 72 were disposed of by full opinions.

Summary In this chapter we offered a brief historical review of the development of the federal judiciary. A perennial concern has existed since preconstitutional times for independent court systems. We focused on the three basic levels created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, noting, however, that Congress has periodically created both constitutional and legislative courts. The bulk of federal litigation is handled by U.S. district courts, courts of appeals, and the Supreme Court. We also briefly examined the role of magistrate judges and law clerks associated with the federal judiciary. We looked at administrative assistance for the federal courts as this relates to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the Federal Judicial Center. We concluded our discussion with a brief look at the workload of each of the three levels of the federal judiciary.

Further Thought and Discussion Questions 1. Under the Articles of Confederation, there was no national judiciary, a situation that was remedied when a national court system was established in Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution. But if Article 3 established a national court system, why did Congress pass the massive Judiciary Act of 1789 within months after the Constitution was adopted?


50 Chapter 2

2. Why is the U.S. Supreme Court described as “distinctly American in conception and function”? 3. How can a democracy justify the fact that federal judges appointed for life possess the power to nullify federal and state laws that were enacted by elected representatives? 4. Since Article 3 judges are appointed for life and are independent of one another, what guarantees exist that justice is consistently and equitably dispensed? Notes 1. Charles Evans Hughes, The Supreme Court of the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 1. 2. Ibid., 2. 3. Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924), 4. 4. John P. Frank, Marble Palace (New York: Knopf, 1958), 79. 5. See Sheldon Goldman, Constitutional Law and Supreme Court Decision-Making (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 41. 6. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803). 7. See Lawrence Baum, The Supreme Court, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1995), 22. 8. Herbert Jacob, “Conclusion,” in Herbert Jacob et al., Courts, Law, and Politics in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), 394. 9. Ibid. 10. Robert H. Birkby, The Court and Public Policy (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1983), 1. 11. Sally J. Kenney, “The European Court of Justice: Integrating Europe Through Law,” Judicature 81 (1998): 250. 12. Ibid., 251. 13. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). 14. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 15. Judicial Business of the United States Courts 2008, available online at www.uscourts.gov/judbus 2008/appendices/A01Sep.08.pdf. 16. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). 17. Stephen T. Early Jr., Constitutional Courts of the United States (Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1977), 100. 18. For a thorough account of the Fifth Circuit split, see Deborah J. Barrow and Thomas G. Walker, A Court Divided: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Politics of Judicial Reform (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 32–61. 19. J. Woodford Howard Jr., Courts of Appeals in the Federal Judicial System: A Study of the Second, Fifth, and District of Columbia Circuits (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), 75–76. 20. See the Web site of the Federal Administrative Law Judges Conference at http://00574d .netsolhost/faljc1.html. 21. See Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353 (1963). 22. See Donald R. Songer, “The Circuit Courts of Appeals,” in The American Courts: A Critical Assessment, ed. John B. Gates and Charles A. Johnson (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1991), 47. 23. Hopwood v. Texas, No. 94–50664, Fifth Circuit, March 18, 1996. 24. Hopwood v. Texas, 518 U.S. 1033 (1996). 25. Howard, Courts of Appeals in the Federal Judicial System, 79.


The Federal Judicial System 51 26. Judicial Business of the United States Courts 2008, available online at www.uscourts.gov/judbus 2008/tables/S01Sep08.pdf.1. 27. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). 28. See Herbert Jacob, Justice in America, 4th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984), chap. 2. 29. Ibid., 37. 30. Robert A. Carp and C. K. Rowland, Policymaking and Politics in the Federal District Courts (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), 3. 31. The decision of the three-judge district court may be found in Roe v. Wade, 314 F. Supp. 1217 (1970), and the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). 32. See information about the Executive Office for Immigration Review, immigration courts, and the Board of Immigration Appeals at the U.S. Department of Justice Web site at www.usdoj.gov. 33. For an excellent discussion of this court in the context of the war on terror, see Richard M. Pious, The War on Terrorism and the Rule of Law (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2006). 34. See “The Secret Court,” available online at www.courts.net/secret.htm. 35. Frank M. Coffin, On Appeal: Courts, Lawyering, and Judging (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 72. 36. Quoted in Robert A. Carp and Russell R. Wheeler, “Sink or Swim: The Socialization of a Federal District Judge,” Journal of Public Law 21 (1972): 379. 37. Howard, Courts of Appeals in the Federal Judicial System, 198. 38. See David M. O’Brien, Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), 165. 39. J. P. Stevens, “Some Thoughts on Judicial Restraint,” Judicature 66 (1982): 179. 40. Peter G. Fish, The Politics of Federal Judicial Administration (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), 124, 166. 41. See Caseload Highlights 2008, available online at www.uscourts.gov/judbus2008/JudicialBus 2008.pdf. 42. See ibid. 43. See ibid. 44. Ibid.

Suggested Resources Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Web Site. Available online at www.uscourts.gov/adminoff .html. A useful site for caseload data compiled for each level of the federal judiciary. Barrow, Deborah J., and Thomas G. Walker. A Court Divided: The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Politics of Judicial Reform. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988. An excellent study of the politics involved in the splitting of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Baum, Lawrence. The Supreme Court, 9th ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2010. A brief look at all aspects of the U.S. Supreme Court. Federal Administrative Law Judges Conference Web Site. Available online at www.faljc.org. Provides useful information about administrative law judges in the federal government. Federal Judicial Center Web Site. Available online at www.fjc.gov. The Web site of the federal courts’ continuing education and research agency. Federal Judiciary Web site. Available online at www.uscourts.gov. The single most important source of information about all aspects of the federal judiciary. Provides links to individual district courts, courts of appeals, and bankruptcy courts as well as other useful Internet sites. Legal Information Institute Web Site. Available online at www.law.cornell.edu. An excellent source of information about all aspects of the U.S. Supreme Court, including recent and historical decisions.


52 Chapter 2 Oyez Web Site. Available online at www.oyez.org. Another useful site for recent and historical Supreme Court decisions. Rowland, C. K., and Robert A. Carp. Politics and Judgment in Federal District Courts. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. A thorough study of the various factors that influence the decisions of federal district judges. Songer, Donald R., Reginald S. Sheehan, and Susan B. Haire. Continuity and Change on the United States Courts of Appeals. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. The most thorough study to date of the U.S. courts of appeals. U.S. Supreme Court Web site. Available online at www.supremecourtus.gov. Provides information about all aspects of the nation’s highest court.


CQ

Researcher Published by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.

thecqresearcher.com

School Desegregation How can the promise of equal education be fulfilled?

T

his May the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. But the promise of equal educational opportunity

for all offered by the once-controversial Brown v. Board of Education ruling is widely viewed as unfulfilled. Today, an increasing percentage of African-American and Latino students attend schools with mostly other minorities — a situation that critics blame on recent Supreme Court decisions easing judicial supervision of desegregation plans. Black and Latino students also lag far behind whites in academic achievement. School-desegregation advocates call for stronger steps to break down racial and ethnic isolation

Most black students today attend majority-black schools, evidence of what civil rights advocates call resegregation.

I N

and to upgrade schools that serve minority students. Critics of

S

mandatory desegregation, however, say stronger accountability,

I

stricter academic standards and parental choice will do more to

D

improve education for all students.

E

THIS REPORT THE ISSUES ......................347 BACKGROUND ..................354 CHRONOLOGY ..................355 CURRENT SITUATION ..........361 AT ISSUE ..........................363

The CQ Researcher • April 23, 2004 • www.thecqresearcher.com Volume 14, Number 15 • Pages 345-372 RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

OUTLOOK ........................365 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................368 THE NEXT STEP ................370

SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

T

CQ Researcher H E

THE ISSUES

347

• Is racial imbalance in schools increasing? • Do minorities suffer educationally because of racial isolation? • Would “school choice” policies help reduce the racial gap in educational achievement for minorities?

BACKGROUND

356

Long, Hard Road Brown v. Board of Education was only a turning point in the campaign for equal education for blacks.

359

Bumps in the Road Desegregation generally advanced in the 1970s and ’80s, but busing provoked fierce protests.

361

Reversing Directions? By the mid-1990s, civil rights advocates were criticizing resegregation.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

348 349

Integration Trend Reversing Schools began resegregating after 1988.

350

Latinos’ Struggles for Equal Education Latinos’ fight began before the 1954 Brown decision.

352

Minority Students Now More Isolated Segregation has increased since 1991.

355

Chronology Key events since 1896.

356

Asian-Americans’ Success Asian-Americans have been highly successful academically despite a history of segregation.

358

What Americans Think Most favor diversity.

360

‘We’ve Yet to Achieve’ Equality of Education An interview with Secretary of Education Rod Paige.

Race-Counting School boards that use race in student assignments face legal action.

365

Race-Mixing? Urban black and Latino students attend schools with largely minority enrollments.

OUTLOOK

365

Mixed Records The four communities in the Brown case have had mixed desegregation success.

363

At Issue Should the government do more to promote diversity?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

368

For More Information Organizations to contact.

369

Bibliography Selected sources used.

370

The Next Step Additional articles.

371

Citing The CQ Researcher Sample bibliography formats.

Cover: Most black and Latino students today attend predominantly minority schools. All of the students at the Georgia Avenue Elementary School in Memphis, Tenn., are AfricanAmerican. (Memphis Public Schools)

346

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CURRENT SITUATION

362

Minority School Districts Receive Less Funding Per-student funding is typically higher in “white” districts.

April 23, 2004 Volume 14, Number 15

Ann Davies

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School Desegregation BY KENNETH JOST

THE ISSUES

jority-black inner-city schools,” says Byron Leet, lead attorney for the school system. ivil rights advocates “That would not be in the consider Louisvillebest interest of young people Jefferson County, Ky., in the community, who have a model of desegregation — benefited greatly from atbut don’t tell that to David tending desegregated schools.” McFarland. The case is being closely McFarland says the counwatched at a time when school ty’s claimed success in racial desegregation litigation namixing comes at the expense tionwide is dormant, but parof his children’s education. ents in some areas are asking In his view, Stephen and courts to block administrators Daniel were denied admisfrom continuing to use race sion to the school of their to promote integration. choice simply because they “If the court decides that the are white. “Diversity should sensitive way that Louisville not be used as an excuse for has gone about trying to achieve discrimination,” he says. integration is not acceptable, The county’s 19 traditional then I worry that there may schools — with their reputabe little or no way to reap the Fifty years after the Supreme Court handed down its tion for good discipline, strucbenefits of integration for our historic Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring tured teaching and parental primary and secondary schools,” racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, most black and Latino students attend predominantly involvement — are so popusays Chinh Quang Le, assistant minority schools. At Birdwell Elementary in Tyler, lar that they cannot accomcounsel for the NAACP Legal Texas, 60 percent of the students are Hispanic. modate all the students who Defense and Educational want to attend. So students Fund, which filed a friend of the May 17, 1954, ruling approaches, the court brief on the side of the Louisville are assigned to schools by lottery. To keep enrollments at each school Jefferson County stands in stark con- school system. The fund directed the within racial guidelines, a separate list trast to the ethnic and racial patterns court challenges against racial segregaof African-American applicants is in most other school districts. Across tion that produced the Brown decision maintained. The county’s voluntary the country today, most black students and remains the principal litigation cen“managed-choice” program — which attend majority-black schools, and an ter in school desegregation cases. replaced a court-ordered desegrega- even larger percentage of Latino stuToday’s pattern of school desegretion plan in 2000 — is designed to dents attend majority-Latino schools — gation litigation underscores the changes prevent any school from having fewer evidence of what civil rights advocates in the nation’s schools — and in the than 15 percent or more than 50 per- call resegregation. nation’s attitudes toward race — since In Louisville, McFarland and three the Brown decision. 3 While the rulcent African-American students. The program works. In a county- other families sued in federal court to ing is universally hailed, its promise is wide system where African-Americans bar the school system from using race widely recognized as unfulfilled and its comprise about one-third of the 96,000 in any student assignments. 2 “It can’t implications for educational policies students, only one school has a ma- be fair to discriminate against a white today vigorously debated. male because he’s a white male,” says jority-black enrollment. “Brown v. Board of Education is one Jefferson County was one of the first Ted Gordon, the plaintiffs’ attorney. of the signal legal events of our time,” school systems in the country to begin “That can’t be fair in anybody’s book.” says Education Secretary Rod Paige, School administrators, however, say who himself attended racially segreintegrating after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic Brown v. Board a ruling for McFarland would effec- gated schools through college in his of Education decision declaring racial tively bring back racial segregation in native Mississippi. But the ruling did segregation in schools unconstitutional. 1 Louisville. “We would be back to ma- not eliminate all the vestiges of segreToday, as the 50th anniversary of jority-white suburban schools and ma- gation, Paige quickly adds. “If the goal Getty Images/Mario Villafuerte

C

Available online: www.thecqresearcher.com

April 23, 2004

347

SCHOOL DESEGREGATION Minority School Districts Receive Less Funding School districts with high enrollments of minority or low-income students typically receive fewer funds compared to districts with more white or wealthier students. In 11 states, the funding gap between white and minority school districts is more than $1,000 per pupil.

Per-Pupil Funding Gaps Between Districts with High and Low Minority Enrollments Wash.

N.D.

Mont.

Minn.

Idaho

Colo.

Kan. Okla.

Calif.

N.M.

Ariz.

N.Y.

Mass.

Iowa Ill.

Utah

Maine Mich.

Wyo. Neb.

Nev.

N.H.

Wis.

S.D.

Ore.

Vt.

Mo.

Ky.

Conn.

W.Va. Va.

Tenn.

S.C.

Miss.

Ala.

Ga.

R.I.

N.J.

N.C.

Ark. La.

Pa.

Ind. Ohio

Del. Md. D.C.

Texas Funding Gaps

Alaska

$1,000 or more

Fla. Hawaii

$1-$500

Note: Data for Hawaii and Tennessee were not available Source: Kevin Carey, “The Funding Gap,” The Education Trust, Oct. 29, 2003

was equality in education — to level the educational playing field for all children, especially children of color — we’ve yet to achieve that,” he says. “We have an unfulfilled promise of Brown,” says Julie Underwood, general counsel for the National School Boards Association, which once resisted and now strongly supports desegregation. “If the civil rights people were actually seeking fully integrated public schools, we have not reached that point.” Civil rights advocates acknowledge that Brown fundamentally transformed American schools — and America itself. “Both whites and blacks have

348

The CQ Researcher

$500-$1,000

been in far more integrated settings than anyone would have imagined before Brown,” says Gary Orfield, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project. But Orfield and other desegregation advocates also maintain that the hard-won progress of the post-Brown era has not merely stalled but is now being reversed. “We’ve been going backward almost every place in the country since the 1990s,” Orfield says. A coterie of educational conservatives from academia and various advocacy groups challenge both this view

Equal or greater funding for highest minority district

of present-day conditions and policies for the future. While praising the Brown decision, they argue that today’s racial separation is not the result of law or policy and that race-conscious assignments violate Brown’s central meaning. Brown “stands for the principles of integration and color-blindness,” says Curt Levey, director of legal and public affairs for the Washington-based Center for Individual Rights. “It’s unfortunate that in the past few decades we have abandoned those principles in favor of racial preferences,” Levey says. “It’s just another form of discrimination.” The center has

represented plaintiffs challenging affirmative action in higher education and, in one case from Minneapolis, racial guidelines in public schools. “Most of our schools became substantially racially balanced,” says David J. Armor, a professor at George Mason University School of Public Policy in Fairfax, Va., and the leading academic critic of mandatory integration. Armor acknowledges that there’s been “some resegregation of schools” but attributes the trend to changes in ethnic and racial residential patterns and the higher percentages of blacks and Latinos in public schools. The debate over desegregation is waged against the disheartening persistence of large gaps in learning and achievement between whites, blacks and Latinos. “The magnitude of the gap is simply appalling,” says Abigail Thernstrom, a senior scholar at the Manhattan Institute and co-author with her husband Stephan Thernstrom of a book on the subject. 4 “A typical black student is graduating from high school with junior high school skills,” Thernstrom says, citing figures from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — informally known as “the nation’s report card.” Hispanics, she says, “are doing only a tad better.” Traditional civil rights advocates acknowledge the gap, but they say that closing the gap requires more thoroughgoing desegregation and better funding for schools with large numbers of minority or low-income students. But educational conservatives discount those solutions, calling instead for changing “school culture” by improving discipline, teaching and student behavior. One path to those changes, conservatives say, is “school choice” — vouchers that help students pay for private school tuition and charter schools that operate with freedom from traditional regulations. Traditional civil rights groups generally oppose vouchers and voice some doubts about char-

School-Integration Trend Reversing The Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. But after more than three decades, the desegration trend in U.S. schools reversed after 1988 — particularly in the South. Then a series of Supreme Court decisions between 1991 and 1995 eased the pressure on school districts to continue desegregation efforts. Today U.S. classrooms are almost as segregated as they were in the late 1960s, and some experts say the trend is likely to continue. Percentage of black students

50%

40

30

20

Blacks in Majority-White Southern Schools (by percentage, 1954-2001)

10

0 1954 1960 1964 1970 1976 1980 1986 1988 1994 2000 2001

Source: Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, “Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare?” The Harvard Civil Rights Project, January 2004

ter schools, saying they drain support from public schools and risk further resegregation of minority students. The policy debates underscore the shared view that Brown — despite its iconic status — has not proved a complete success. “You have to say it was a partial failure,” says James Patterson, a professor emeritus of history at Brown University and author of a new account of the ruling and its impact. Theodore Shaw, director of the Legal Defense Fund, agrees: “Brown changed everything and yet did not change everything.”


As the nation prepares to unite in celebrating Brown, here are some of the issues that divide Americans 50 years later: Is racial imbalance in schools increasing due to court actions? North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg County school system in 1971 became the first in the country to operate under a court-ordered desegregation plan using wide-scale busing to achieve racial balance in school populations. Under the plan, African-Americans comprised between 30 percent and

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Latinos’ Unheralded Struggles for Equal Education

W

hen school board officials in Lemon Grove, Calif., became concerned in 1930 that Mexican-American students were slowing down the Anglo pupils, they hit upon a simple solution: build a new school solely for the Mexican-Americans. To the board’s surprise, however, Mexican-Americans in the small border community protested, deriding the new facility as a “barn.” And — more than two decades before the Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional — they won a lower-court order forcing the school board to dismantle the plans for a dual system of education. 1 The Lemon Grove incident is one of many efforts by Latinos to fight for educational equity well before the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The history of those efforts, however, has gone largely untold. “These cases are not taught, even in law school,” says Margaret Montoya, a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law. Today, Latinos continue to receive far less attention in school desegregation debates than African-Americans even though Latinos now comprise the nation’s largest ethnic minority, and Latino students are somewhat more likely than blacks to be in ethnically identifiable schools. “We don’t see an equal commitment on the part of educational equity for Latinos,” says James Ferg-Cadima, legislative staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in Washington. The Lemon Grove ruling was never appealed and had no further impact in California. Chicano families won a similar ruling from a lower court in Texas around the same time. It, too, did nothing to undo the advancing segregation of MexicanAmerican students in that state. 2 In 1946, however, a federal appeals court in California ruled in favor of Mexican-American parents contesting school segregation in four districts in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. Ferg-Cadima says the case “could have been a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education,” but the school districts decided not to appeal. The ruling did lead to a law in 1947, however, that barred school segregation in the state. The act was signed by then-Gov. Earl Warren, who later became chief justice and author of the Brown decision. 3 Perversely, Mexican-American families prevailed in some of their early legal efforts on the grounds that they were white and could not be segregated as black students were. “We have not been treated as a white subgroup, and we don’t think of ourselves as a white subgroup,” Montoya says. “But when the litigation was being developed, that seemed to be a reasonable way of trying to get kids educational rights.” One consequence, Montoya adds, has been “to drive a wedge between Latinos and African-Americans.”

40 percent of the students at most of the schools through the 1970s and ’80s. 5

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The Supreme Court recognized Latinos as a separate group for desegregation purposes only in 1973 in a case from Denver. 4 By that time, however, the justices were about to pull back on school-desegregation remedies. “About the time we could have profited from Brown and used it ourselves, the protection starts crumbling,” Ferg-Cadima says. Latinos have been the principal beneficiaries, however, of the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1974 decision that school districts must make sure that non-English-speaking students are given language skills needed to profit from school attendance. 5 Language is among the educational barriers distinctive to Latino students. Another, Ferg-Cadima says, is the migratory status of many Latino families, especially in agricultural areas in California, Texas and the Southwest. Today, most Latino students attend majority-Latino schools in every region of the country, according to The Harvard Civil Rights Project. 6 As with African-American students, ethnic isolation for Latinos increased through the 1990s. The most intense segregation is found in the Northeast, where 45 percent of Hispanic students attend schools that are 90 to 100 percent Hispanic. As for educational achievement, Latinos lag far behind white students and only slightly ahead of African-Americans. The average Latino student scored around the 25th percentile in both reading and mathematics in the 1999 National Assessment of Educational Performance — the so-called nation’s report card. 7 “The one lesson from Brown for all minority communities is that educational equity must be battled for on all fronts — it’s something that has to be sought out,” Ferg-Cadima says. “The schoolhouse gate isn’t always open for our kids, so we have to fight for schools to be open and conducive to learning for all students.” 1 Robert R. Alvarez Jr., “The Lemon Grove Incident: The Nation’s First Successful Desegregation Court Case,” The Journal of San Diego History, Vol. 32, No. 2 (spring 1986). Alvarez is the son of the lead plaintiff in the case, Alvarez v. Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District. 2 See “Project Report: De Jure Segregation of Chicanos in Texas Schools,” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Vol. 7, No. 2 (March 1972), pp. 307-391. The authors are Jorge C. Rangel and Carlos M. Alcala. 3 See Vicki L. Ruiz, “‘We Always Tell Our Children They Are Americans’: Méndez v. Westminster and the California Road to Brown v. Board of Education,” The College Board Review, No. 200 (fall 2003), pp. 20-27. See also Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975 (1976), pp. 108-135. 4 The case is Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1, 413 U.S. 921 (1973). 5 The case, brought by non-English-speaking Chinese students in San Francisco, is Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974). 6 Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, “Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare?,” Harvard Civil Rights Project, January 2004, p. 21. 7 Cited in Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (2001), pp. 19-20.

With public support for desegregation weakening, however, the school system shifted in the 1990s to volun-

tary measures to maintain racial balance — chiefly by attracting white students to majority-black schools by turn-

AP Photo

ing them into magnet schools. Then, Orfield acknowledges that the in- legal practices,” he says. “Ethnic comat the end of the decade, white fam- crease in non-white enrollment poses munities cluster together because of a ilies successfully sued the school sys- “an obstacle” to racial mixing. But he lot of different factors. Some of these tem, forcing it to dismantle the bus- and other desegregation advocates factors include preferences; some are ing plan altogether. 6 blame resegregation primarily on the economic.” The result, combined with increas- courts, including the Supreme Court. The Harvard civil rights report found ing percentages of African-American The percentage of black students that during the 1990s the trend toand Hispanic students in the system, attending majority-black schools was ward integration was reversed, and has been a growing concentration of declining nationwide through the 1980s, the percentage of black students atminorities in many schools. Today, more Harvard Civil Rights Project reports tending majority-black schools inthan one-third of the county’s 148 show, but it increased during the creased throughout the country. The schools have at least 80 percent non- 1990s — just as the Supreme Court percentage of Latino students attendwhite enrollment. ing majority-minority Civil rights advoschools also increased cates say Charlotte is in every region. Latinos one of many school are more likely than systems where politAfrican-Americans to be ical and legal develin a racially or ethnicalopments have conly identifiable school, the tributed to a trend report shows. toward resegregaEducational conservtion. “The federal atives, however, claim court required Charthat Orfield presents a lotte to resegregate,” misleading picture by fosays Harvard’s Orcusing exclusively on field, “and they are minority pupils’ exporesegregating — sure to white students fast.” and not on white stuCritics of mandadents’ exposure to tory integration, howblacks and Latinos. ever, say today’s con“There are fewer white centration of children who have no non-white students, non-white classmates,” Three high school students in Clinton, Tenn., peacefully register their particularly in urban says Stephan Thernfeelings about their school becoming the first in Tennessee to integrate, school systems, strom. “More and more on Aug. 27, 1956. Many other protests were violent. largely reflects resiwhite children have midential demographnority classmates.” ics. Nationwide, whites comprise only was signaling to federal courts that More broadly, conservatives insist that about 60 percent of students in pub- they could ease desegregation orders. talk of resegregation ignores the changes lic schools, compared to 80 percent “The only basic thing that’s changed wrought by Brown. “There is no pubin the late 1960s. In Charlotte today, since [the 1980s] is the Supreme Court lic school today that is segregated in 43 percent of the system’s 114,000 stu- of the United States,” Orfield main- the way that schools were routinely dents are black, and only 42 percent tains. 7 segregated before Brown v. Board of “This is a demographic process,” Education,” says Roger Clegg, vice white. “It’s wrong to say that schools are responds Armor, “and has little to do president and general counsel of the segregated or becoming resegregated,” with what the courts are doing in the Center for Equal Opportunity, which opposes racial preferences. “Racial balsays Abigail Thernstrom, a former mem- desegregation area.” Education Secretary Paige also argues ance in a school that reflects the neighber of the Massachusetts Board of Education. “Cities are becoming more heav- that court rulings are not responsible for borhood is not segregation in the sense ily minority. There’s nothing we can do the increasing racial isolation of blacks that we had segregation before Brown.” Shaw, of the Legal Defense Fund, about that. You can’t helicopter kids in or Latinos. “It’s not our impression that to get more white kids in the schools.” these patterns are the result of current counters that segregation never was


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SCHOOL DESEGREGATION Minority Students Are Now More Isolated The 1954 Brown ruling led to widespread school integration, but today, due to resegregation, an overwhelming percentage of AfricanAmerican and Latino students attend schools with predominantly non-white student bodies. Segregation has increased nationwide since 1991, when the Supreme Court began to relax pressure on school districts to integrate. Percentage of Blacks and Latinos in 50-100% Minority Schools 80%

70

60

50

1968

1988

1991

2001

Percentage of Blacks and Latinos in 90-100% Minority Schools 80% 70 60 50 40 30 20

1968

1988 Black

1991

2001

Latino

Source: “Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare?” The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, January 2004.

eliminated completely and is increasing today. “The legal fiction is that we’ve severed the link between present-day segregation and our past segregated and discriminatory actions,” Shaw says. “The truth is that the effects of decades and decades of segregation and discrimination were to

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segregate housing and to segregate other aspects of life. “The busing remedies didn’t eliminate the effects of that discrimination; they neutralized them,” Shaw continues. “Once you get rid of the desegregation plans, those effects become operative once again.”

Shaw and Orfield both say school boards should be allowed to consider race and ethnicity in pupil-assignment plans in order to promote integration. But educational conservatives oppose policies to deliberately increase racial mixing. “I like racially mixed schools better than racially homogeneous schools,” Abigail Thernstrom says. “But I do not want computer printouts that say you have no choice as to where to send your kids.” Do minorities suffer educationally because of racial isolation? Black and Latino youngsters lag significantly behind whites (and AsianAmericans) on every significant measure of academic achievement. The “racial gap” in learning deeply troubles advocates and experts on both sides of the desegregation debate. Traditional civil rights advocates largely blame racial isolation for the lagging performance of blacks and Latinos. There is “a very systematic relation” between segregation and the learning gap, Orfield says. “No one has ever made separate schools equal in American history on any scale.” Some critics of mandatory integration, however, see no solid evidence that racially mixed classrooms significantly benefit learning. “There is absolutely no reason to assume that because schools are heavily Hispanic or black that these children can’t learn, that they have to sit next to whites or Asians in order to learn,” Abigail Thernstrom says. The social-science evidence on the issue is voluminous but less than clearcut. In his review of the literature, George Mason University’s Armor concludes that racial composition “by itself” has “no significant effect on black achievement.” When combined with other educational improvements, he says, desegregation has improved black achievement “to a limited but significant degree.” 8

Desegregation advocates strongly disagree with this minimalist view. Orfield says the effect of desegregation on achievement is “significant, but not transformative.” But he adds that desegregation has a “huge” effect on “life chances,” such as graduating from high school, going to college and “being able to live in an interracial world as an adult.” 9 In an examination of data from Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, Roslyn Mickelson, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, found that black and white students both had higher average scores on standardized tests if they had been in racially integrated schools. “There is a small but significant effect on test scores that cumulates over time,” she says. 10 Orfield and other desegregation advocates say the achievement gap for minority students results in part from underfunding of schools with high percentages of black or Latino students. “The resources aren’t equivalent because those are often schools that have a badge of poverty,” says Underwood of the school boards association. “So they have fewer resources.” U.S. schools traditionally have received most of their funding from property taxes, so schools in wealthier neighborhoods usually had more resources than schools in districts with lower property values. 11 Armor and the Thernstroms instead blame the racial gap primarily on social and cultural factors. “There are very strong correlations between single-parent households, low birth-weight and performance in school,” says Abigail Thernstrom. Armor lists single-parent households as one of 10 “risk factors” for low academic achievement. Some of the others include poverty, limited education of parents, the size of the family and the age of the mother at pregnancy. 12 The most incendiary aspect of the issue, perhaps, concerns the claim that

some black students disdain academic achievement for fear of being accused by their peers of “acting white.” The thesis is most often associated with the work of the late John Ogbu, an African-American professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, who died in 2003. Ogbu first aired the theory in a coauthored article about Washington, D.C., high school students in 1986 and repeated similar views in a book about students in the affluent Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights. 13 Education Secretary Paige subscribes to the theory based not only on Ogbu’s research but also on his own experience as school superintendent in Houston. “I had a chance to see examples where some kids were not putting their best efforts into this in an effort to keep status among some of their peers,” Paige says. “It exists.” Armor, however, discounts the theory, noting that the educational gap for African-Americans can be found at the earliest grades. Abigail Thernstrom also says the evidence is “not very good.” She places greater blame on schools’ failure to instill educational ambitions in minority youngsters. “Schools are delivering a wrong message — that this is a racist society, and there’s a limit to how far you can go,” she says. But the Legal Defense Fund’s Shaw says there is evidence of an “acting white” syndrome and says the issue needs more discussion among AfricanAmericans. But he adds that some of the debate over the educational gap for black students has “the lurking sense of racial inferiority. “If people come to this issue in good faith and they want to focus on the causes, the first thing they have to recognize is that there’s still massive inequality,” Shaw says. “By the time you get to high school, AfricanAmerican students have had a completely different experience from white students. Let’s not blame the victim. Let’s fix the problem.”


Would “school choice” policies help reduce the racial gap in educational achievement for African-Americans and Latinos? President Bush touts school vouchers, not integration, as the best way to help disadvantaged students get a better education. “When we find children trapped in schools that will not change, parents must be given another viable option,” Bush told students and teachers at Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington on Feb. 13, 2004. The president used the appearance to plug a new law he had just signed to award vouchers to some 1,700 District of Columbia students per year to help pay tuition at private schools. 14 Educational conservatives say “school choice” programs such as vouchers or charter schools will help improve schools by promoting innovation and overcoming resistance to change from public school administrators and teachers. Education Secretary Paige claims particular support for school choice among African-American families. “My reading of the polls shows that African-American parents support choice, vouchers, strongly,” Paige says. “The parents are supporters because the parents want the best education for the child.” The public school establishment strongly opposes vouchers, saying they would drain needed money from public schools. Underwood, the school boards association lawyer, says vouchers also “threaten any kind of diversity agenda that a school district may have.” Private schools, she says, “can choose to discriminate. They can choose not to serve students with special needs or students who are poor or of a particular culture or ethnicity.” Local voucher programs are already operating in Milwaukee and Cleveland; Florida has a statewide program pushed by Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother. The programs are targeted to middle- and low-income families, but are small-scale because of limited funding. “Vouchers are going to be a sideshow for American education,” Orfield says.

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SCHOOL DESEGREGATION Charter schools — which operate under public auspices but free from some generally applicable regulations — are more widespread. 15 Some 2,700 charter schools were operating as of the 2002-2003 academic year. Many of them were established by black families and educators to serve the educational needs of African-American students. But Orfield and other desegregation advocates are skeptical that they will be better for black pupils than public schools. “There is no evidence that charter schools are better than average,” Orfield says, “and our studies show that they’re more segregated than public schools.” Abigail Thernstrom counters that vouchers and charter schools “have the potential” to improve education for minority youngsters. “They have the potential for one very simple reason,” she says. “They are out from under the constraints that make for such mediocre education in so many public schools.” Armor, however, sees no necessary benefit for minority youngsters from school choice programs. “I don’t see personally why vouchers or charters would have any automatic impact on school quality,” Armor says. “It might or might not. There’s nothing intrinsic about charters that says those teachers are going to have a better subject mastery” than teachers at regular schools. As for vouchers, Armor says they “can also be used to go to a school that doesn’t have better programs” than regular public schools. Public-education groups cite underfunding as a major barrier to improving education for minority youngsters. Nationwide, schools with the highest minority or low-income enrollments receive $1,000 less per student than schools with the lowest minority or poverty enrollments, according to a report by the Education Trust, a Washington advocacy group. (See map, p. 348.) “There is definitely a relationship between the amount of funding a district gets and academic performance,” says Kevin Carey, a senior policy analyst with the group. “There are im-

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portant issues besides money: organization, expectations for students, curricula, the way teachers are compensated. But money matters, too.” “We need to pay attention to sending resources where resources are needed,” Underwood says, “so students with high educational needs get the resources they need to learn, so you really aren’t leaving any child behind.” But Paige and other educational conservatives discount the importance of funding. “I don’t accept that the achievement gap is a function of funding issues,” Paige says. “It is a factor, but it is not the factor. The more important factors are those factors embedded in the No Child Left Behind Act: accountability, flexibility and parental choice — and teaching methods that work.” Orfield, however, says the No Child Left Behind Act has produced “confusion and frustration” for local school districts with scant evidence of help for minority pupils. 16 And the Legal Defense Fund’s Shaw insists that school choice proposals could help only some minority students while leaving most of them behind. “Most African-American students, like most students, are going to remain in public schools,” Shaw says. “The promise of Brown isn’t going to be realized by focusing on those few students who can escape from public schools. If we don’t talk about fixing public education, then I think we betray not only Brown but also the fundamental notion of what public education is all about.”

BACKGROUND Long, Hard Road

T

he Supreme Court’s celebrated decision in Brown v. Board of Education marks neither the beginning

nor the end of the campaign for equal education for black Americans. It was only a turning point in a struggle with roots in the 19th century that now extends into the 21st. 17 Black youngsters received no education in the antebellum South and little schooling in the decades immediately after the abolition of slavery. Where blacks did go to school, they were segregated from whites in most (though not all) parts of the country, by law or custom. Some legal challenges to the practice in the 19th century succeeded, but the Supreme Court thwarted any broad attack on segregation with its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson upholding “separate but equal” in public transportation. The NAACP — founded in 1909 — won its first victory against racial segregation in education in 1935, with a state court ruling to admit a black student to the University of Maryland’s law school. Four years later, one of the winning lawyers, Thurgood Marshall, was named to head a separate organization: the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. The Inc. Fund — as it was then known — won important victories from the Supreme Court with two unanimous decisions in 1950 striking down segregationist practices in graduate education at state universities in Oklahoma and Texas. 18 Meanwhile, Marshall had been helping organize local campaigns against segregation in elementary and secondary education in four Southern and Border States. The four cases, which were consolidated in the Brown decision, differed in their facts and in their legal histories: Black schools in Clarendon County, S.C., were mostly ramshackle shanties; those in Topeka, Kansas, were more nearly comparable to schools for whites. The federal judge in the Prince Edward County, Va., case found “no hurt or harm to either race” in dual school systems; Continued on p. 356

Chronology Before 1950 1970s-1980s Racial segregation takes root in public schools — by law in the South, by custom elsewhere; NAACP begins challenging “separate but equal” doctrine in the 1930s.

Desegregation advances, but busing triggers battles in many cities.

•

1973 Supreme Court orders Denver to desegregate, making it the first nonSouthern city ordered to integrate.

1950s-1960s Supreme Court outlaws racial segregation; ruling provokes massive resistance in South.

1950 Supreme Court bars racial segregation in public graduate education. 1954 Supreme Court rules racial segregation in public elementary and secondary schools unconstitutional on May 17, 1954 (Brown I). 1955 Court says schools must be desegregated “with all deliberate speed” (Brown II). 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower calls out Arkansas National Guard to maintain order when Little Rock’s Central High School is integrated. 1964 Civil Rights Act authorizes federal government to bring school-desegregation suits and to withhold funds from schools that fail to desegregate. 1968 Impatient with limited desegregation, Supreme Court says school districts must dismantle dual school systems “now.”

1971 Supreme Court upholds use of busing as desegregation tool.

1974 Supreme Court bars federal courts from ordering cross-district busing to achieve desegregation . . . Start of busing in Boston provokes fierce opposition. 1975 Coleman report blames white-flight from urban public schools on courtordered busing; desegregation advocates disagree. Late 1980s Integration peaks, with most African-American students still attending predominantly black schools in each of five regions across country. •

1990s

Many school systems freed from court supervision; race-conscious assignments challenged as “reverse discrimination.” 1998, 1999 Federal courts strike racial preferences used for Boston Latin School, “magnet” schools in two Washington, D.C., suburban districts.


1991 Supreme Court allows judges to lift court orders if segregation has been eliminated to all “practicable” extent. 1995 Supreme Court says judges in desegregation cases should try to end supervision of school systems. •

2000-Present Brown’s promise hailed, impact debated. 2001 President Bush wins passage of No Child Left Behind Act, providing penalties for school districts that fail to improve students’ overall scores on standardized tests. . . . Federal court in September lifts desegregation decree for Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina. 2003 Supreme Court upholds affirmative action for colleges and universities. . . . Federal judge in December hears challenge to racial guidelines for Louisville-Jefferson County Schools; federal appeals court in same month considers suit to bar use of race as “tiebreaker” in pupil assignments in Seattle. 2004 Brown decision widely celebrated as 50th anniversary approaches; civil rights advocates decry “resegregation,” while others say emphasis on racial balance is divisive and unproductive. . . . Federal appeals court to hear challenge in June to racial-balance transfer policy for Lynn, Mass., schools.

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Success Asian-American Style

U

ncivilized, unclean and filthy beyond all conception . . . they know not the virtues of honesty, integrity or good faith,” fulminated Horace Greeley, the 19th-century abolitionist and social reformer, describing Chinese immigrants. 1 But the numbers today tell a different story. By any measure, Asian-Americans have been phenomenally successful academically. As a result, the concentration of Asian students in top American schools is wildly disproportionate to their ratio in the U.S. population. For example, Asians make up approximately 70 percent of San Francisco’s most prestigious public school, Lowell High, with Chinese-Americans alone constituting over 50 percent, although Chinese make up only 31.3 percent of the school district. The excellent scholastic record of Asian students dates back at least to the 1930s, when California teachers wrote of “ideal” Japanese students who could serve as an example to other students. Their delinquency rate was one-third that of whites. Today, although Asians make up only 3.8 percent of the U.S. population, Asian-Americans accounted for 27 percent of the freshman class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 2000-2001 school year, 25 percent at Stanford, 24 percent at the California Institute of Technology and 17 percent at Harvard; Asians were a phenomenal 40 percent of the freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999. One in five American medical students is Asian. 2 Similarly, between 10 and 20 percent of the students at the nation’s premier law schools are Asian. The achievement gap between whites and Asians is greater than the gap between blacks and whites, by some measures. In 2001, 54 percent of Asian-Americans between ages 25 and 29 had at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 34 percent of whites and 18 percent of blacks. Academics have long disputed the reasons for Asians’ stellar performance. The controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve, held that Asians did better because they were inherently more intelligent than others. But numerous academics attacked Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s methodology and racial conclusions. Some studies show that Asians, particularly Chinese, consistently score higher on IQ tests than other groups. 3 But there is increasing evidence that racial differences are minimal. 4

Continued from p. 354

the state judge in the Delaware case declared that state-imposed segregation “adversely affected” education for blacks. The federal judge in Topeka also had agreed that separate schools were harmful for blacks but abided by Supreme Court precedent in rejecting any relief for the plaintiffs.

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Another explanation attributes the relative success of Asians in America to the socioeconomic and educational status of the Asian immigrants who were allowed to enter the United States. In 1965, immigration reforms allotted immigrant visas preferentially to people with needed skills. Many came from India or China with advanced degrees in medicine or technology. The parents’ educational and occupational attainments “far exceed the average for native-born Americans,” according to Stephen L. Klineberg, a Rice University sociology professor studying Houston-area demographics. 5 With such parents, the children seem primed for success, but critics of socioeconomic explanations point out that even though many early Asian immigrants were mainly laborers and peasants, they still performed exceptionally well in school. Most of those early Asian-Americans, mainly Chinese, lived in California, where school segregation developed quickly. By 1863, “Negroes, Mongolians and Indians” were prohibited from attending schools with white children. 6 Statewide restrictions were soon amended so non-white children could attend public schools with whites where no separate schools existed; in areas with fewer Chinese immigrants, they often attended schools with whites. San Francisco responded by building a separate school for Chinese children in 1885. In 1906, Japanese and Koreans also were ordered to attend the so-called Oriental School in San Francisco, although the Japanese resisted, and by 1929 the vast majority of Japanese children attended integrated schools. 7 The courts and legislature ended legal segregation in California schools in 1947. However, Chinese immigrants in California have staunchly opposed integration proposals that required their children to be bused out of local neighborhoods. “One time, in the 1960s and ’70s, when integration of schools was the big issue, I almost got lynched in Chinatown by Chinese-Americans for supporting integration,” said Ling-chi Wang, a professor of ethnic studies at Berkeley and veteran civil rights advocate. 8 More recently, Chinese-American parents successfully challenged a San Francisco school-integration plan, arguing that their children were losing out due to racial quotas at magnet schools. 9 Today, regardless of their parents’ income level or education, Asian students perform better academically than other groups, though

The four cases were argued before the Supreme Court twice — first in December 1952 and then again in December 1953. The justices were divided after the first argument. Five or six justices appeared inclined to declare segregation unconstitutional, according to later reconstructions of the deliberations. 19 But Chief Justice Fred

M. Vinson hesitated to press for a final decision and accepted the suggestion of Justice Felix Frankfurter to ask for a reargument. Vinson’s death in September 1953 paved the way for the appointment of Chief Justice Earl Warren, who as governor of California had signed a law abolishing racial segregation in that

Library of Congress

public school students, they are their performance does imthe lowest-performing group, prove as parental education according to Suanna Gilmanand income increase. The Ponce, director of the school persistent performance gap, district’s multilingual education even accounting for socioedepartment. 12 For example, conomic factors, leads to a third explanation for Asians’ only 3 percent of the Hmong success: the great emphasis had a bachelor’s degree, acput on education by Asian cording to the 1990 census, parents, higher academic compared with 24 percent of expectations and the attitude the nation as a whole. that successful achievement But there is progress: Among is simply a question of hard the 25-to-34 age group, the first work. Hmong generation to grow up Asians were segregated from whites in California schools at For instance, a study by in the United States, 13.5 perthe end of the 19th century. In 1885, San Francisco Temple University’s Laucent had degrees. And of the built a separate school for Chinese children. rence Steinberg of 20,000 Vietnamese, many of whom also Wisconsin and California arrived as refugees, 26.9 perstudents found that Asian-American students felt any grade below cent had a college degree; the national average is 27.5 percent. A- would anger their parents; for whites the anger threshold was — Kenneth Lukas B-, for blacks and Latinos a C-. And research shows that more than 50 percent of Asian-American high school seniors spend an hour or more per night on homework, compared to 30 percent 1 Quoted in Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate (1998), p. 17. of Latinos and less than 25 percent of whites. 10 2 Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Education experts often blame the gap between how white Gap in Learning (2003), p. 85. children and new immigrants perform educationally on the lan- 3 Jeff Wise, “Are Asians Smarter?” Time International, Sept. 11, 1995, p. 60. guage barriers faced by the immigrants. But evidence suggests 4 Natalie Angier, “Do Races Differ? Not Really, Genes Show,” The New York Times, Aug. 22, 2000, p. F1 and Steve Olson, “The Genetic Archaeology of that newly arrived Asians learn English faster than Latinos, thus Race,” The Atlantic Monthly, April 2, 2001, p. 69. breaking down those barriers faster. For instance, 1990 Census 5 Quoted in Mike Snyder, “Survey: Area Asians Have Head Start,” The Housdata showed that 90 to 95 percent of third-generation Asian- ton Chronicle, Oct. 1, 2002, p. A1. American children spoke only English at home, compared to 6 For background on Asians in California, see Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975 (1976). only 64 percent of Mexican-Americans. 11 7 Bill Hosokawa, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (2002), pp. 85-89. But Asian immigrants are not a monolithic “model minori- 8 Quoted in Sam McManis, “Activist Fights for Asian Americans at U.S. Labs,” ty.” Asians who arrive already speaking English, such as Fil- San Francisco Chronicle, March 27, 2002, p. A1. ipinos or Indians, fare better educationally and economically. 9 David J. Hoff, “San Francisco Assignment Rules Anger Parents,” EducaThe poverty rate among Filipino immigrants — who come from tion Week, June 4, 2003, p. 9. See also “All Things Considered,” National Public Radio, Aug. 10, 2002, and April 5, 2004. a country with a 95 percent literacy rate — is only 6.3 per- 10 Thernstrom, op. cit., p. 94. cent, compared with 37.8 percent among the Hmong — a 11 Ibid., pp. 111-113. 12 Quoted in Erika Chavez, “Hmong Cry for Help Has Been Heard,” Sacramostly uneducated ethnic group from Southeast Asia. In Sacramento, where Hmong comprise about 8 percent of mento Bee, May 28, 2002, p. B1.

state’s public schools. 20 Warren used his considerable political skills to forge the unanimous decision on May 17, 1954, which buried the “separate but equal” doctrine, at least in public education. “Separate educational facilities,” Warren wrote near the end of the 13-page opinion, “are inherently unequal.”

A year later, the justices rejected both Marshall’s plea to order immediate desegregation and a federal recommendation that a specific timetable for desegregation be established. Instead, the court in Brown II ruled that the four school districts be required to admit pupils on a racially non-discriminatory basis “with all deliberate speed.” 21


Public opinion polls indicated a narrow majority of Americans favored the ruling, but the court’s gradualist approach allowed the formation of what became massive resistance. More than 100 members of Congress signed the “Southern Manifesto” in 1956 vowing to use “all lawful means” to reverse the ruling. Most school districts

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SCHOOL DESEGREGATION What Americans Think About School Desegregation While 60 percent of Americans think classroom racial diversity is “very important,” 66 percent think school officials should not try to increase the diversity of local schools. In elementary school, were your classmates of many different races, or mostly the same race? Many Different Mostly Same Other/Don’t know

25% 73% 2%

Do the public elementary schools in your community today have kids mostly of the same race, or many different races? Many Different Mostly Same Other/Don’t Know

60% 34% 6%

Did the Supreme Court make the right decision to end racial segregation in schools? Right Wrong Other/Don’t know

90% 6% 4%

How did ending racial segregation affect the quality of America’s schools? Better Worse No Change Other/Don’t know

45% 12% 34% 9%

How important is it that students of different races are in class together? Very Important Somewhat Important Not Important Other/Don’t know

60% 28% 8% 4%

Should school officials try to increase the racial diversity of schools in your community? Increase Leave As Are Other/Don’t know

23%

The CQ Researcher

Bumps in the Road

66% 11%

Source: Scripps Survey Research Center, Ohio University, www.newspolls.org. The national telephone survey of 1,013 people was taken Feb. 15-24, 2004.

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dragged their feet, while even token integration efforts brought forth scattered bombings and violence and more widespread intimidation and harassment. In the most dramatic instance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to call out National Guardsmen in September 1957 to maintain order at Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., after nine black students were enrolled. As of 1964, only 2 percent of black students in the South were attending majority-white schools. Facing resistance both active and passive, the Supreme Court left local federal courts largely on their own for nearly a decade. In 1964, however, Congress included provisions in the landmark Civil Rights Act that authorized the federal government to file school desegregation suits and to withhold funds from school districts that failed to desegregate. Four years later, the court — with Marshall now serving as the first African-American justice — announced that its patience was at an end. The justices rejected a “freedom of choice” plan offered by a rural Virginia school board and declared that school districts had to develop plans to dismantle dual systems “root and branch” — and to do it “now.” Given patterns of residential segregation, many plans devised by federal judges inevitably involved busing — typically, transporting black students to schools in predominantly white areas. Many white parents objected, but the court — under a new chief justice, Warren Burger — unanimously ruled in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg case in 1971 that courts had discretion to order busing as part of a desegregation plan.

I

n the 1970s and ’80s, desegregation advanced generally in the South and in most of the rest of the country. But the use of busing as a prin-

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cipal tool for racial mixing provoked dents out of their neighborhoods to complained that busing “brought fear fierce protests in some cities and wide- distant schools of uncertain character to black students and white students.” spread opposition from officials and and quality. The polarizing issue erupt- President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, was the public at large. Meanwhile, Latino ed most dramatically in ostensibly lib- lukewarm toward the practice. Sociolenrollment in public schools began to eral Boston, where a federal judge or- ogist James Coleman — who authored increase dramatically — and so, too, dered racial mixing between heavily an influential report in 1968 documenting did the percentage of Latino students white South Boston and predominant- the educational achievement gap for attending predominantly Latino schools. ly black Roxbury. Patterson notes that African-American students — added reThe busing issue spectability to the antidominated the headbusing critique with a relines and the policy port in 1975 blaming debates in the 1970s, “white flight” from cenobscuring the less tral-city schools on courtdramatic evidence of ordered busing and callchanges in public ing instead for voluntary schools, especially in desegregation. 25 the South. From Civil rights supporters 1968 to 1988, the countered that opponents percentage of black were exaggerating the students attending costs and disruption of predominantly micourt-ordered busing nority schools fell when their real objection sharply in the South was to racial mixing al— from more than together. They also sharply 80 percent to around disputed Coleman’s “white 55 percent — and flight” theory, insisting that declined significantthe movement of whites ly in every other reto the suburbs — and the gion except the resulting concentration of Northeast. 22 As hisAfrican-Americans in inner torian Patterson cities — stemmed from notes, most of the social and economic heavily black trends dating from the schools in the South 1950s unrelated to school were more nearly desegregation. comparable to white The Supreme Court schools by the end itself acknowledged the logistical problems of of the 1980s, salaries busing in some of its defor black teachers cisions, but the justices were more nearly Pioneering civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall, shown here in couched their emerging equal to those for 1957, successfully argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education disagreements on dewhites and teaching case before the U.S. Supreme Court. President Lyndon B. Johnson segregation in legalistic staffs were inteappointed Marshall to the high court in 1967. terms. In 1973, the court grated. Public education in the South, he on the first day of the plan in Sep- established a critical distinction beconcludes, “had been revolutionized” — tember 1974, only 10 of the 525 white tween “de jure” segregation — orthanks to pressure from the then-De- students assigned to Roxbury High dered by law — and “de facto” segpartment of Health, Education and Wel- School showed up, while buses carry- regation resulting only from residential fare and rulings from federal courts. 23 ing 56 black pupils bound for South segregation. The ruling allowed a lower For many Americans, however, de- Boston High School were stoned. 24 court to enforce a desegregation plan, segregation came to be understood only Busing had few vocal supporters. but only on the grounds that the school as court-ordered transportation of stu- President Gerald Ford, a Republican, district had intentionally drawn zones


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AP Photo

to separate black and white pupils. ership of conservative Chief Justice its effects had been largely eliminated (The ruling also recognized Hispanic William H. Rehnquist, then eased the and that apparent racial and ethnic sepstudents as an identifiable class for de- pressure on school districts to contin- aration reflected residential neighborsegregation purposes.) In a partial dis- ue desegregation efforts with three hoods and the growing proportion of sent, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. criti- more decisions between 1991 and 1995. African-American and Latino students in cized the distinction between “de facto” The rulings — in cases from Okla- public schools. As federal courts backed away from and “de jure” segregation, saying any homa City; suburban DeKalb County, racial separation of students was con- Ga.; and Kansas City — effectively told desegregation suits, white students stitutionally suspect. federal judges to ease judicial super- brought — and in a few cases won — A year later, the court dealt inte- vision once legally enforced segrega- so-called reverse-discrimination suits congration advocates a more serious set- tion had been eliminated to the ex- testing use of race in school-assignment back in a 5-4 ruling that barred trans- tent practicable. For the majority, plans. Meanwhile, some civil rights supp o r t a t i o n o f s t u d e n t s a c r o s s Rehnquist wrote in the Kansas City porters shifted direction by bringing school-district lines to achieve deseg- case that federal judges should re- school-funding cases in state courts. School-desegregation regation. The ruling litigation all but petered struck down a deout during the 1990s. Nearsegregation plan for ly 700 cases remain techthe heavily black nically alive nationwide, Detroit school disbut a law professor’s extrict and the preamination of the period dominantly white 1992-2002 found only 53 schools in sursuits in active litigation. 26 rounding Wayne County suburbs. For Professor Wendy Parker of the majority, Chief the University of CincinJustice Burger said nati College of Law also school district lines showed that school dis“could not be casutricts had succeeded in ally ignored.” In disevery instance but one sent, Marshall called when they asked for sothe ruling “a large called unitary status — in step backwards.” order to get out from under further judicial supervision Three years later, Police escort school buses carrying African-American students into of desegregation decrees the court dealt anSouth Boston in 1974, implementing a court-ordered — even if enrollments other blow to debusing plan to integrate schools. continued to reflect racial segregation advoimbalance. cates by ruling — in In addition, Parker said judges were a case from Pasadena, Calif. — that a member that their purpose was not school district was not responsible for only to remedy past violations but also somewhat lax in requiring racial balresegregation of students once it had to return schools to the control of local ance of teaching staffs and that any racial imbalance in teaching assignadopted a racially neutral attendance and state authorities. ments invariably mirrored a school’s plan. racial composition: Schools with a The rulings combined with politidisproportionate number of black cal opposition and socioeconomic teachers were predominantly black, trends to stall further increases in racial those with disproportionate numbers mixing of students by the end of the y the mid-1990s, traditional civil of white teachers were predominantly 1980s. The percentage of black sturights advocates were strongly crit- white. dents attending predominantly minorMeanwhile, a few federal courts ity schools increased after 1988 in the icizing what they termed the resegreSouth and West and after 1991 in the gation of African-American and Latino were curbing school districts’ discreNortheast, Midwest and Border States. students. Critics of mandatory integration to consider race in assigning stuThe Supreme Court, under the lead- tion replied that legal segregation and dents to elite or so-called magnet

Reversing Directions?

B

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schools. In 1998, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against the use of “flexible race/ethnicity guidelines” for filling about half of the places each year at the elite Boston Latin School. The court said the Boston School Committee had failed to show that the policy either promoted diversity or helped remedy vestiges of past discrimination. 27 The next year, another federal appeals court ruled in favor of white students’ claims that school boards in two suburban Washington, D.C., school districts — Montgomery County, Md., and Arlington, Va. — violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by considering race in magnet-school placements. In both rulings, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the use of race was not narrowly tailored to achieve the goal of diversity. The Supreme Court refused to hear the school districts’ appeals. 28 With federal courts seemingly uninterested in desegregation initiatives, civil rights groups put more resources into school-funding challenges before state legislatures or courts. 29 The various efforts, pushed in some 40 states, generally aimed at narrowing or eliminating financial disparities between well-to-do and less-well-off school districts. Funding-equity advocates succeeded in part in several states — sometimes through court order, sometimes by legislative changes spurred by actual or threatened litigation. The initiatives helped cause a shift in education-funding sources away from the historic primary reliance on local property taxes. Today, just over half of local education funding comes from state rather than local revenues, according to Carey, of the Education Trust. Nonetheless, school districts with high minority or low-income enrollments still receive fewer funds compared to districts with more white or wealthier students.

The limited progress on funding issues gave civil rights advocates only slight consolation for the evidence of increasing racial imbalance in public schools. By 2001, at least two-thirds of black students and at least half of Latino students nationwide were enrolled in predominantly minority schools. Significantly, the Northeast is more segregated: More than half of black students (51 percent) and nearly half of Latino students (44 percent) attended intensely segregated schools with 90 to 100 percent minority enrollment. “We’ve been going backward almost every place in the country since the 1990s,” Harvard’s Orfield says. Critics of mandatory integration, however, viewed the figures differently. They emphasized that white students’ exposure to African-American and Latino students has continued to increase. In any event, they say, residential patterns, city-suburban boundary lines and the increasing percentages of African-American and Latino students in overall enrollment make it impractical to achieve greater racial mixing in many school districts. “The proportion of minorities in large districts is growing,” says George Mason’s Armor. “When it crosses 50 percent, whatever your racial-assignment plan, you’re going to have minority schools.” For his part, President Bush has pushed education reform aimed in part at helping low-income students but without adopting traditional civil rights goals or rhetoric. “American children must not be left in persistently dangerous or failing schools,” Bush declared as he unveiled — on Jan. 23, 2001, his second full day in office — what eventually became the No Child Left Behind Act. Approved by Congress in May 2001, the law prescribes student testing to measure academic progress among public school students and provides


financial penalties for school districts that fail to improve student performance. Education Secretary Paige says the law seeks to continue the effort to improve educational opportunities for all students started by Brown v. Board of Education. The law passed with broad bipartisan support. By 2004, however, many Democrats were accusing the administration of failing to provide funding to support needed changes, while many school administrators were criticizing implementation of the law as excessively rigid and cumbersome.

CURRENT SITUATION Race-Counting

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chools in Lynn, Mass., were facing a multifaceted crisis in the 1980s, with crumbling buildings, tattered textbooks, widespread racial strife and rapid white flight. To regain public confidence, the school board in 1989 adopted a plan combining neighborhood-school assignments with a transfer policy that included only one major restriction: No child could transfer from one school to another if the move would increase racial imbalance at either of the schools involved. The Lynn school board credits the plan with stabilizing enrollment, easing race relations and helping lift academic performance throughout the 15,000-student system. But lawyers for parents whose children were denied transfers under the plan are asking a federal appeals court to rule that the policy amounts to illegal racial discrimination.

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‘We’ve Yet to Achieve’ Equality of Education

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ecretary of Education Rod Paige was interviewed on March 24, 2004, in his Washington office by Associate Editor Kenneth Jost. Here are verbatim excerpts from that interview.

On “equal” opportunities for African-American and Latino students: “I’ve got to come down on the side that there’s a large amount of lower expectations for minority kids. . . . If there are lower expectations for a child, then the answer to your question has to be that there is not a fair opportunity.”

U.S. Dept. of Education

On his experience attending racially segregated schools: “The fact that [white students] had a gym was a big deal. They played basketball on the inside. They had a big gym with lights and stuff on the inside. We played basketball on the outside with a clay court. We played up until the time that you couldn’t see the hoop any more. . . . I wanted to take band, but there was no music. I wanted to play football, but there was no football team [until senior year]. . . . The concept of separate but equal is not at all academic for me. It is very personal. And even today . . . I don’t know what I missed.”

On the use of race in pupil assignments: “A person should not be disadvantaged because of the color of their skin. Nor should that person be advantaged because of the color of their skin. . . . That’s the principle I would apply to any set of circumstances.”

On causes of the “racial gap” in learning: “There are three drivers. One is the quality of instructional circumstances. . . . The second is the quantity of it . . . And the third one is student engagement. Learning is an active activity between the teacher and the student. So the student does have some responsibility here in terms of student engagement.”

On the impact of the Brown v. Board of Education decision: “Was the goal to take ‘separate but equal’ away . . . ? The answer would be [yes], in a very On underfunding of minority strong and striking way. If the and low-income schools: goal was equality education, to Secretary of Education Rod Paige level the educational playing field “I don’t accept that the achievefor all children, especially children ment gap is a function of funding isof color, the answer is we’ve yet to achieve that.” sues. I think it is a factor, but it is not the factor. . . . The more important factors are those embedded in the No Child On the resegregation of black and Latino students: Left Behind Act: accountability, flexibility and parental choice “Ethnic communities cluster together because of a lot of dif- — and teaching methods that work.” ferent factors. Some of these factors include preferences; some are economic. So our goal should be now to provide a quality On school choice proposals — vouchers and charter education for a child no matter where they are in this system.” schools: “My reading of the polls show[s] that African-American parOn efforts to promote racial balance in schools: ents support choice, vouchers, strongly. . . . The parents are “If anybody is in a segregated school based on unfairness, supporters because [they] want the best education for the child. then, yes, they should work against that. But . . . we don’t want . . . Enforcing monopolistic tendencies on schools is a detrito get integration confused with educational excellence. We want ment to schools. The people who force these monopolistic tento provide educational excellence to kids no matter what their dencies on schools deny schools the opportunity to innovate, location is [or] the ethnic makeup of their community.” create and reach their potential.”

“They’re denying school assignments based on the color of the kid who’s asking for the assignment,” says Michael Williams, a lawyer with the Boston-

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based Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights. The case — expected to be argued in September 2004 before the 1st U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston — is one of several nationwide where school boards with voluntary integraContinued on p. 364

At Issue: Should the federal government do more to promote racial and ethnic diversity in public schools? Yes

GARY ORFIELD

DAVID J. ARMOR

DIRECTOR, THE HARVARD CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT CO-AUTHOR, “BROWN AT 50: KING’S DREAM OR PLESSY’S NIGHTMARE?”

PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY WRITTEN FOR THE CQ RESEARCHER, APRIL 2004

WRITTEN FOR THE CQ RESEARCHER, APRIL 2004

t

he federal government has taken no significant, positive initiatives toward desegregation or even toward serious research on multiracial schools since the Carter administration. In fact, Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and both George Bushes were generally opposed to urban desegregation and named like-minded appointees to run the major federal civil rights and education agencies. Attorney General John Ashcroft, for example, fought desegregation orders in St. Louis and Kansas City, and Reagan Supreme Court appointee Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has consistently opposed urban desegregation. Between 1965 and 1970, federal leadership played a decisive role in ending educational apartheid in the South and transforming it into the nation’s most desegregated region. Southern schools were the most integrated for more than three decades, during which time black achievement, graduation and college attendance increased, and educational gaps began to close. But those schools now are seriously resegregating. President Nixon largely ended enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in schools and intentionally stirred up national division over busing as part of his “Southern strategy.” Then, in two separate 5-4 decisions in 1973 and 1974, four Nixon justices helped block school-finance equalization and desegregation across city-suburban lines. The federal government never enforced the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision recognizing Latinos’ right to desegregation. And in the 1990s the Rehnquist court thrice ended desegregation orders, effectively producing resegregation. Nearly 90 percent of the heavily segregated minority schools produced by this process have high rates of poverty and educational inequality. Federal policy could help reverse the resegregation trend. First, leaders must make the compelling case that desegregation, properly implemented, is valuable for all students, preparing them to live and work in a multiracial society. Second, judicial vacancies and civil rights enforcement agencies should be staffed with progressives. Third, the desegregationaid program could be revived to help suburbs experiencing racial change without preparation or resources. In addition, serious research needs to be done on resegregation. Educational choice programs should forbid transfers that increase segregation and reward those that diminish it. And magnet school programs should be expanded. Finally, fair-housing enforcement should be greatly increased and policies adopted to help stabilize desegregated neighborhoods.

t

o answer this question, we must ask three related questions. First, do legal constraints prevent the promotion of diversity in public schools? The answer is yes. The Supreme Court has provided a legal framework for using race in public policy, and the justices recently clarified that framework in two cases involving college admissions in Michigan. Racial diversity can be a compelling government purpose, but policies must be narrowly tailored to reflect the use of race or ethnicity as only one factor, not the predominant factor, in the policy. Applying this framework to public schools, race could not be used as the primary basis for assigning students to schools (as in old-fashioned busing plans), unless a school district was remedying illegal segregation. The use of race might be justified for controlling enrollment in a voluntary magnet school on the grounds that students should be allowed to choose racially diverse programs, but even this limited use of race is being challenged in the courts. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on diversity for K-12 public schools. Second, does diversity bring clear social and educational benefits to public school children? Diversity unquestionably has social value, since it allows children from different backgrounds to learn about other cultures and how to work together. However, it is hard to find social outcomes that have consistently benefited from desegregation. For example, race relations have sometimes worsened after desegregation programs, particularly if they involved mandatory busing. Moreover, the formal educational value of diversity has not been proven, since large-scale school-desegregation programs have not reduced the racial gap in academic achievement. The third question we must ask is what kind of promotion, if any, might be appropriate for the federal government? Federal agencies have an important but limited role in policies for K-12 public schools. They conduct research, sponsor special programs, conduct assessment and recently adopted policies to raise academic standards and accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act. Given the legal constraints on diversity programs and the uncertain educational benefits of diversity in K-12 schools, I do not think promoting diversity should be a high priority at this time. However, since there is still a debate over the educational benefits of racial diversity programs, it would be appropriate for the federal government to sponsor research to help resolve this important issue.

yes no

No


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SCHOOL DESEGREGATION Continued from p. 362

CQ/Scott J. Ferrell

lies or using the information for as- ment stabilized. The district’s students are 58 percent minority, 42 percent tion plans are facing legal actions signment purposes. 31 Schools in Lynn, a gritty former mill white. aimed at eliminating any use of race The citizens’ group, which had earin student assignments. Attorneys for town 10 miles north of Boston, were the school boards are vigorously de- in “dire straits” in the 1980s before lier filed a suit that forced Boston to adoption of the integration plan, ac- drop its use of busing for desegregafending race-conscious policies. “You cannot ignore race and ex- cording to Cole. Attendance was down; tion, sued Lynn schools in August pect that the issue will not be pre- violence and racial conflict were up. 1999. Williams acknowledges the school sent in your school system,” says White students — who comprised system’s past problems and more reRichard Cole, senior counsel for civil more than 80 percent of the enroll- cent progress. But he says all of the rights in the Massachusetts attorney ment as of 1977 — were fleeing the improvements resulted from “race-neugeneral’s office, who is defending the schools at the rate of 5 percent a year. tral stuff that could have happened if Lynn plan. “The only way is to take There was also evidence that white stu- the plan had not included a racial elsteps to bring kids of different racial dents were being allowed to transfer ement.” U.S. District Judge groups together.” Nancy Gertner rejected Meanwhile, the the group’s suit in a 156federal appeals court page ruling in December for Washington state 2003. “The Lynn plan does is considering a chalnot entail coercive aslenge to the Seattle signments or forced busSchool District’s use ing; nor does it prefer of race as one of sevone race over another,” eral factors — a sosaid Gertner, who was apcalled “tiebreaker” — pointed by President Bill in determining asClinton. “The message it signments to overconveys to the students subscribed schools. is that our society is hetThe 9th Circuit aperogeneous, that racial peals court heard arharmony matters — a guments on Dec. 14, message that cannot be 2003, in a three-yearconveyed meaningfully in old suit by the presegregated schools.” 32 dominantly white ParStanton Elementary School, in Stanton, Ky., reflects the current status of school integration in most of the nation. Most public schools are as Legal Defense Fund ents Involved in segregated today as they were in 1969. During the 2000-2001 Director Shaw calls the Community Schools school year, for instance, only 30 non-white students were legal challenges to volclaiming that the polenrolled in the 2,500-student Stanton school district. untary desegregation icy violates equal-proplans “Orwellian.” “Our tection guarantees. 30 Opposing experts and advocates out of predominantly black schools in adversaries have this perverted sense of the law and the Constitution that in the desegregation debate are also violation of the district’s stated rules. The school board adopted a mul- holds mere race consciousness — closely watching the Louisville case, where U.S. District Judge John Hey- tipronged strategy to try to stem even if it’s in support of desegregaburn II is expected to rule by the white flight and improve schools for tion — as discriminatory,” he says. But Clegg of the Center for Equal end of the school year on Jefferson white and minority youngsters alike, County’s racial guidelines for pupil Cole says. A neighborhood-school as- Opportunity says schools should not assignments. And in another case, a signment plan was combined with assign students on the basis of race conservative public-interest law firm the construction of new schools, in- or ethnicity. “The social benefits to is in California state court claiming cluding magnet schools, using funds achieving a predetermined racial or that a statewide initiative barring racial under a state law to aid racial-balance ethnic mix are very small compared preferences prevents the Berkeley programs. Cole says attendance rates to the social costs of institutionalschool system from asking for racial and achievement levels are up, dis- ized racial and ethnic discrimination,” information from students and fami- cipline problems down and enroll- he says.

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Race-Mixing?

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ome two-dozen Washington, D.C., high school students gathered on a school day in late February for a “dialogue” with the president of the American Bar Association and the city’s mayor about Brown v. Board of Education. Dennis Archer, a former mayor of Detroit, is black — as is Washington’s mayor, Anthony Williams. And so, too, are all but three of Woodson High School’s 700 students. The students — chosen from an advanced-placement U.S. history course — listen respectfully as Archer and Williams relate the story of the Brown case and the implementation of the ruling over the ensuing 50 years. The students’ questions, however, make clear that they feel little impact from the ruling in their daily lives. “Why is there such a small percentage of white students in D.C. schools?” Danyelle Johnson asks. Wesley Young echoes the comment: “I feel that to make it better we should be like Wilson [High School] and have different races in schools,” he says, referring to a well-regarded integrated school in a predominantly white neighborhood. “It’s really hard for me to make [Brown] relevant to them,” assistant principal Phyllis Anderson remarks afterward, “because they’ve been in an all-black environment all their lives, and their parents before them.” With 84 percent of its 65,000 public school students black, another 10 percent Hispanic and only 5 percent white, Washington provides an extreme, but not unrepresentative, example of the situation in central-city school districts throughout the country. Nationwide, central-city black students typically attend schools with 87 percent minority enrollment, according to the Harvard Civil Rights Project. For Latinos, the figure is 86 percent. This “severe segregation” results

from residential segregation and the “fragmentation” of large metropolitan regions into separate school districts, the project’s most recent survey explains. 33 The Supreme Court’s 1974 ruling barring court-ordered interdistrict desegregation plans virtually eliminated the possibility of racial mixing between inner cities and suburbs except in countywide systems like those in Louisville-Jefferson County and Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. The court’s ruling in the Kansas City desegregation case in 1995 also limited federal judges’ power to order costly improvements for central-city schools in an effort to attract white students from the suburbs. Over the past decade or so, middle-class blacks and Latinos have themselves migrated to the suburbs, but because of residential segregation the movement has not fundamentally changed the pattern of racial isolation in the schools, according to the Harvard report. Even in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas, the typical black student attends a school that is 65 percent minority, the typical Latino a school that is 69 percent minority. 34 Federal courts, meanwhile, have been freeing dozens of school districts from judicial supervision by declaring the segregated systems dismantled and granting the districts “unitary status.” In an examination of 35 such districts, the Harvard study found that black students’ exposure to whites had fallen in all but four — typically, by at least 10 percent. “Desegregation is declining rapidly in

places the federal courts no longer hold accountable,” the report concludes. 35 The Legal Defense Fund’s Shaw says the trends result from judicial solicitude for school districts that once practiced segregation. “If a snapshot reveals a desegregated district,” he says, “the court can grant judicial absolution, and the district can return to a segregated status.” The Manhattan Institute’s Abigail Thernstrom counters that the focus on racial mixing is beside the point. “Teach the kids instead of worrying about the racial composition of the school,” she says. “Otherwise, we’re chasing demographic rainbows. Cities aren’t going to get whiter. And they’re not going to get more middle-class.”

OUTLOOK Mixed Records

F

ifty years after the Supreme Court declared the end of racial segregation, the four communities involved in the historic cases present mixed records on the degree of progress in bringing black and white children together in public schools. 36 Topeka — home of Oliver Brown and his daughter Linda, then in elementary school — achieved “substantial levels of integration” while under a court-ordered desegregation plan,

About the Author Associate Editor Kenneth Jost graduated from Harvard College and Georgetown University Law Center, where he is an adjunct professor. He is the author of The Supreme Court Yearbook and editor of The Supreme Court from A to Z (both CQ Press). He was a member of The CQ Researcher team that won the 2002 American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award.


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SCHOOL DESEGREGATION according to the Harvard Civil Rights Project. But integration has receded slightly since the system was declared unitary and judicial supervision was ended in 1999. As of 2001, black students in Topeka were in schools with 51 percent white enrollment — down from 59 percent in 1991. Just outside the city limits, however, better-off suburban school districts have predominantly white enrollments. “The city was then, as it is now, physically and emotionally segregated,” Ronald Griffin, a black professor at Washburn University Law School in Topeka, remarked at a symposium in 2002. “That has not changed.” 37 The Delaware case “led to the merger and full desegregation of all students” in Wilmington and adjoining suburban districts, the Harvard report says. The federal court lifted judicial supervision in 1996, but Wilmington and the entire state remain as some of the most integrated school systems in the country, according to the report. The two Southern communities involved in the four cases present a sharp contrast. Prince Edward County, Va., resisted integration to the point of closing all public schools from 1959 until the Supreme Court ordered them reopened in 1964. Today, however, the school system has an integration level “far above the national average” and student achievement in line with other Virginia districts, despite a predominantly black enrollment, according to the Harvard report. In Clarendon County, S.C., however, School District Number One in tiny Summertown has only 60 white students among a total enrollment of 1,100. Other white students attend a private academy set up at the start of desegregation in 1969. When an Education Week reporter recently asked Jonathan Henry — a great-great-grandson of one of the plaintiffs — about his interactions with white students,

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Henry seemed “bewildered. . . . He really doesn’t know any.” 38 The legacy of the Brown cases is “mixed,” according to historian Patterson. “It seems in the early 2000s to be somewhat more complicated, somewhat more mixed than anybody in the 1970s could have imagined.” “We are miles ahead because of Brown,” Education Secretary Paige says. “But we have yet to achieve” the goal of equal educational opportunities for all students. Whatever has or has not been accomplished in the past, the nation’s changing demographics appear to be combining with law and educational policy to push ethnic and racial mixing to the side in favor of an increased emphasis on academic performance. Schools “are going to be more racially identifiable,” the Legal Defense Fund’s Shaw says. “I don’t see any public policy right now that’s going to turn that around.” Critics of mandatory integration applaud the change. “At the end of the day, what you want to ask is, ‘Are the kids getting an education?’,” Abigail Thernstrom says. “The right question is what are kids learning, not whom are they sitting next to.” The emphasis on academic performance makes the challenges for schools and education policy-makers all the more difficult, however, not less. “The black kid who arrives at school as a 5- or 6-year old is already way, way behind, and it just gets worse as they go on,” historian Patterson says. “There’s only so much the schools can do.” Latino youngsters enter school with many of the same socioeconomic deficits, often combined with limited English proficiency. In any event, the debates about educational policy have yet to catch up with the fact that Latinos are now the nation’s largest minority group. 39 “We don’t see an equal commitment on the part of educational equity for Latinos,” says James FergCadima, an attorney for the Mexican

American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It’s a major challenge for all of us to work together collegially to make sure that our children get the education they deserve,” ABA President Archer says. “We’re going to have to do a lot more to make sure all of our children in public schools — or wherever they are — graduate with a good education and can be competitive in a global economy.”

Notes 1

The decision is Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). The ruling came in four consolidated cases from Topeka; Clarendon County, S.C.; Prince Edward County, Va.; and Wilmington-Kent County, Del. In a companion case, the court also ruled racial segregation in the District of Columbia unconstitutional: Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954). 2 The case is McFarland v. Jefferson County Public Schools, 3:02CV-620-H. For coverage, see Chris Kenning, “School Desegregation Plan on Trial,” The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, Dec. 8, 2003, p. 1A, and subsequent daily stories by Kenning, Dec. 913. McFarland’s quote is from his in-court testimony. 3 For background, see Kenneth Jost, “Rethinking School Integration,” The CQ Researcher, Oct. 18, 1996, pp. 913-936. 4 Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, No More Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (2003). For a statistical overview, see pp. 11-23. 5 Some background drawn from Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, “The Academic Consequences of Desegregation and Segregation: Evidence From the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,” North Carolina Law Review, Vol. 81, No. 4 (May 2003), pp. 1513-1562. 6 The decision is Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 269 F.3d 305 (4th Cir. 2001). For coverage, see Celeste Smith and Jennifer Wing Rothacker, “Court Rules That Schools Unitary,” The Charlotte Observer, Sept. 22, 2001, p. 1A. 7 See Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, “Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare,”

The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, January 2004. 8 David J. Armor, “Desegregation and Academic Achievement,” in Christine H. Rossell et al., School Desegregation in the 21st Century (2001), pp. 183-184. 9 See Orfield and Lee, op. cit., pp. 22-26. 10 Mickelson, op. cit., pp. 1543ff. 11 For background, see Kathy Koch, “Reforming School Funding,” The CQ Researcher, Dec. 10, 1999, pp. 1041-1064. 12 See David J. Armor, Maximizing Intelligence (2003). 13 See John Ogbu, Black Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (2003). 14 Quoted in Justin Blum, “Bush Praises D.C. Voucher Plan,” The Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2004, p. B2. For background, see Kenneth Jost, “School Vouchers Showdown,” The CQ Researcher, Feb. 15, 2002, pp. 121-144. 15 For background, see Charles S. Clark, “Charter Schools,” The CQ Researcher, Dec. 20, 2002, pp. 1033-1056. 16 See Gary Orfield et al., “No Child Left Behind: A Federal-, State- and District-Level Look at the First Year,” The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, Feb. 6, 2004. 17 For a recent, compact history, see James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, 2001. The definitive history — Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality — was republished in April 2004, with a new preface and final chapter by the author. 18 The decisions are Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 339 U.S. 637. Sweatt required Texas to admit a black student to its main law school even though a “black” law school was available; McLaurin ruled that the University of Oklahoma could not deny a black student use of all its facilities, including the library, lunchroom and classrooms. 19 For a recent reconstruction of the deliberations, see National Public Radio, “All Things Considered,” Dec. 9, 2003. 20 See Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855-1975 (1976), p. 108. 21 The case is Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 349 U.S. 294 (1955).

FOR MORE INFORMATION Center for Equal Opportunity, 14 Pidgeon Hill Dr., Sterling, VA 20165; (703) 4215443; www.ceousa.org. Opposes the expansion of racial preferences in education, employment and voting. Center for Individual Rights, 1233 20th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036; (202) 833-8400; www.cir.org. A nonprofit, public-interest law firm that opposes racial preferences. Harvard Civil Rights Project, 125 Mt. Auburn St., 3rd floor, Cambridge, MA 02138; (617) 496-6367; www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu. A leading civil rights advocacy and research organization. Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 1717 K St., N.W. Suite 311, Washington, DC 20036; (202) 293-2828; www.maldef.org. Founded in 1968 in San Antonio, MALDEF is the leading nonprofit Latino litigation, advocacy and educational outreach organization. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., 99 Hudson St., 16th floor, New York, NY 10013; (212) 219-1900; www.naacpldf.org. The fund’s nearly twodozen attorneys litigate on education, economic access, affirmative action and criminal justice issues on behalf of African-Americans and others. National School Boards Association, 1680 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314; (703) 838-6722; www.nsba.org. The association strongly supports school desegregation. 22

“Brown at 50,” Harvard Civil Rights Project, op. cit., Appendix: Figure 5. 23 Patterson, op. cit., p. 186. 24 Ibid., p. 173. 25 James S. Coleman, Sara D. Kelly and John A. Moore, Trends in School Segregation, 19681973, The Urban Institute, 1975. The earlier report is James S. Coleman, et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1966. 26 Wendy Parker, “The Decline of Judicial Decisionmaking: School Desegregation and District Court Judges,” North Carolina Law Review, Vol. 81, No. 4 (May 2003), pp. 1623-1658. 27 The case is Wessmann v. Gittens, 160 F.3d 790 (1st Cir. 1998). 28 The decisions are Tuttle v. Arlington County School Board, 195 F.3d 698 (4th Cir. 1999) and Eisenberg v. Montgomery County Public Schools, 197 F.3d 123 (4th Cir. 1999). 29 See Koch, op. cit. 30 The case is Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. For coverage, see Sarah Linn, “Appeals Judges Told of Schools’ Racial Tiebreaker,” The Associated Press, Dec. 16, 2003.


31

The case is Avila v. Berkeley Unified School District, filed in Alameda County Superior Court. For coverage, see Angela Hill, “Suit Accuses District of Racial Bias,” The Oakland Tribune, Aug. 9, 2003. 32 The decision is Comfort v. Lynn Schools Committee, 283 F Supp, 2d 328 (D.Mass. 2003). For coverage, see Thanassis Cambanis, “Judge OK’s Use of Race in School Assigning,” The Boston Globe, June 7, 2003, p. A1. 33 Orfield and Lee, op. cit., p. 34. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., pp. 35-39. 36 Ibid., pp. 11-13, 39 (Table 21). 37 Quoted in Vincent Brydon, “Panel: Segregation Still Exists in U.S. Schools,” The Topeka Capital-Journal, Oct. 26, 2002. The Topeka district has a Web site section devoted to the Brown case (www.topeka.k12.ks.us). 38 Alan Richard, “Stuck in Time,” Education Week, Jan. 21, 2004. 39 For background, see David Masci, “Latinos’ Future,” The CQ Researcher, Oct. 17, 2003, pp. 869-892.

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Bibliography Selected Sources Books Armor, David J., Forced Justice: School Desegregation and the Law, Oxford University Press, 1995. A professor of public policy at George Mason University offers a strong critique of mandatory desegregation. Includes table of cases and seven-page bibliography. Cushman, Clare, and Melvin I. Urofsky (eds.), Black, White and Brown: The School Desegregation Case in Retrospect, Supreme Court Historical Society/CQ Press, 2004. This collection of essays by various contributors — including the lawyer who represented Kansas in defending racial segregation in Brown — provides an historical overview of the famous case, from a variety of perspectives. Klarman, Michael J., From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, Oxford University Press, 2004. A law professor at the University of Virginia offers a broad reinterpretation of racial issues, from the establishment of segregation through the Brown decision and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Includes extensive notes and a 46page bibliography. Kluger, Richard, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality, Vintage, 2004. A former journalist and book publisher has written a definitive history of the four school-desegregation suits decided in Brown v. Board of Education. Originally published by Knopf in 1976, the book has been reissued with a new chapter by the author. Ogletree, Charles J., Jr., All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education, Norton, 2004. A well-known African-American professor at Harvard Law School offers a critical examination of the unfulfilled promise of the Brown decision. Includes notes, case list. Patterson, James T., Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, Oxford University Press, 2001. A professor emeritus of history at Brown University provides a new compact history of Brown and its impact. Rossell, Christine H., David J. Armor and Herbert J. Walberg (eds.), School Desegregation in the 21st Century, Praeger, 2001.

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Various academics examine the history and current issues involving desegregation. Rossell is a professor of political science at Boston University, Armor a professor of public policy at George Mason University and Walberg a professor emeritus of education and psychology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Includes chapter notes, references. Thernstrom, Abigail, and Stephan Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, Simon & Schuster, 2003. An academic-scholar couple provides a strongly argued case for adopting educational reforms, including school choice, instead of racial mixing to reduce the learning gap for AfricanAmerican and Latino pupils. Abigail Thernstrom is a senior scholar at the Manhattan Institute; Stephan Thernstrom is a professor of history at Harvard. Includes detailed notes.

Articles Cohen, Adam, “The Supreme Struggle,” Education Life Supplement, The New York Times, Jan. 18, 2004, p. 22. A Times editorial writer offers an overview of the 1954 Brown decision and its impact. Henderson, Cheryl Brown, “Brown v. Board of Education at Fifty: A Personal Perspective,” The College Board Review, No. 200 (fall 2003), pp. 7-11. The daughter of Oliver Brown, first-named of the 13 plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, provides a personal reflection on the landmark case. Henderson is executive director of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research in Topeka (www.brownvboard.org). Hendrie, Caroline, “In U.S. Schools, Race Still Counts,” Education Week, Jan. 21, 2004. This broad survey of racial issues in public schools was the first of a five-part series marking the 50th anniversary of Brown. Other articles appeared on Feb. 18 (CharlotteMecklenburg County, N.C.), March 10 (Chicago; Latinos), April 14 (Arlington, Va., challenges of integration), with a final story scheduled for May 19 (parental choice).

Reports and Studies Orfield, Gary, and Chungmei Lee, “Brown at 50: King’s Dream or Plessy’s Nightmare?” The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, January 2004. The project’s most recent analysis of school-enrollment figures finds that racial separation is increasing among AfricanAmerican and Latino students.

The Next Step: Additional Articles from Current Periodicals Achievement Gap

Elementary and Secondary Schools

Asimov, Nanette, “Testament to Testing,” San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 18, 2003, p. A21. In San Francisco, frequent diagnostic testing to pinpoint students’ problem areas in reading and math has made significant headway in closing the achievement gap.

Gewertz, Catherine, “Racial Gaps Found to Persist in Public’s Opinion of Schools,” Education Week, May 21, 2003, p. 9. Whites express the highest levels of satisfaction with their schools and blacks the lowest, reflecting the educational divide facing America.

Barnes, Julian, et al., “Unequal Education,” U.S. News & World Report, March 22, 2004, p. 66. Legally enforced segregation is no longer an issue in schools, but the disturbing gap in performance between children of different races remains troubling.

Hendrie, Caroline, “City Boards Weigh Rules on Diversity,” Education Week, Nov. 5, 2003, p. 1. School districts in Boston, Little Rock and San Francisco weigh changes to their racial policies as they ponder possible court challenges.

Bok, Derek, “Closing the Nagging Gap in Minority Achievement,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 24, 2003, p. 20. The president emeritus of Harvard University discusses the causes of the achievement gap and recommends ways to reduce it.

Olszewski, Lori, and Darnell Little, “Integration a Dream Never Lived,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 2003, Metro Section, p. 1. Chicago’s school integration plan achieved very little for $108 million per year; a changing ethnic balance in the city means that old plans are increasingly outdated.

Johnson, Darragh, “A Classroom Crusade,” The Washington Post Magazine, Nov. 10, 2002, p. W22. Eric Smith is an educational reformer with one mission — to close the racial achievement gap in schools. Mathews, Jay, “As Data Show Fewer Report Race, Minority Scores on SAT Questioned,” The Washington Post, April 4, 2004, p. A6. With 25 percent of SAT takers declining to disclose their race, some question whether it can still be useful in measuring the racial achievement gap. Olson, Lynn, “Panel Asks for Action on Hispanic Achievement Gap,” Education Week, April 16, 2003, p. 21. A presidential commission notes the educational problems faced by Hispanics and proposes measures to help. Reid, Karla Scoon, “ ‘Value Added’ Study Finds NAEP Gains for Black Students,” Education Week, March 17, 2004, p. 7. A study using a new methodology finds that blacks improved their reading assessment scores by a wider margin than whites or Asians. Taylor, Stuart, “Closing the Racial Gap in Learning: What Does Not Work,” National Journal, Oct. 25, 2003. A discussion of Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom’s social research, which argues that more integration and more money would not help close the achievement gap between white and minority students. Winerip, Michael, “In the Affluent Suburbs, an Invisible Race Gap,” The New York Times, June 4, 2003, p. B8. Even controlling for economic factors, a performance gap exists between black and white students in prosperous schools.


Powell, Michael, “Separate and Unequal in Roosevelt, Long Island,” The Washington Post, April 21, 2002, p. A3. The schools in Roosevelt, Long Island, combine segregation and an inequitable property tax system, and the result is some of the nation’s poorest performing schools. Smith, Celeste, “Resegregation; When Busing Ends,” The New York Times, Jan. 18, 2004, Section 4A, p. 30. With the end of its decades-old court-ordered desegregation plan, North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools are making extraordinary efforts to maintain high academic success rates. Winter, Greg, “Schools Resegregate, Study Finds,” The New York Times, Jan. 21, 2003, p. A14. As court-ordered desegregation plans end, racial isolation is increasing in America’s schools as a result of housing patterns and demographic factors.

Higher Education Cavanagh, Sean, “Ed. Dept. Report Lists Alternatives to Race Use in College Admissions,” Education Week, April 9, 2003, p. 28. The Department of Education releases a report on raceneutral policies to foster diversity; critics call the report misleading. Dobbs, Michael, “At Colleges, an Affirmative Reaction,” The Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2003, p. A1. Most don’t realize it, but minority students with strong academic credentials are intensely fought over by selective colleges; selling SAT data is big business.

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SCHOOL DESEGREGATION Fears, Darryl, “At U-Michigan, Minority Students Find Access — and Sense of Isolation,” The Washington Post, April 1, 2003, p. A3. The University of Michigan boasts about its commitment to diversity, but black students often feel racially isolated and misunderstood.

Knickerbocker, Brad, “Evolution of Affirmative Action,” The Christian Science Monitor, June 24, 2003, p. 1. From President John F. Kennedy to the many major corporations that lined up to support racial preferences at the University of Michigan, affirmative action has a long history in America.

Kantrowitz, Barbara, and Pat Wingert, “What’s at Stake,” Newsweek, Jan. 27, 2003, p. 30. The questions surrounding affirmative action are complex — a 10-step overview to help sort out the issues may make things clearer.

Reid, Karla Scoon, “Va. Expresses ‘Regret’ for Closures Aimed at Resisting Desegregation,” Education Week, Feb. 19, 2003, p. 17. The Virginia state Senate voted to express regret for the closure of the Prince Edward County, Va., public schools for five years to resist integration.

Merritt, Jennifer, “B-Schools: A Failing Grade on Minorities,” Business Week, May 12, 2003, p. 52. Only about 12 percent of students at the best business schools are black or Hispanic; outside the best schools, the numbers are slightly lower. Orfield, Gary, and Susan Eaton, “Back to Segregation,” The Nation, March 3, 2003, p. 5. With elementary and secondary schools becoming more segregated, the authors maintain there is a moral duty to allow affirmative action to level the playing field. Schmidt, Peter, “New Pressure Put on College to End Legacies in Admissions,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 30, 2004, p. 1. Schools are coming under increased pressure to end legacy admissions, which due to previous segregation are biased against minority students. Taylor, Stuart, “Racial Preferences in Admissions: The Real Choice We Face,” National Journal, Jan. 25, 2003. The affirmative action status quo amounts to pervasive racial discrimination against whites and Asians; x-percent plans could be damaging to academic standards. Winter, Greg, “Study Challenges Case for Diversity at Colleges,” The New York Times, March 20, 2003, p. A28. A new study challenges the idea that more diversity automatically increases racial tolerance and the educational experience.

History Cohen, Adam, “The Supreme Struggle,” The New York Times, Jan. 18, 2004, Section 4A, p. 22. The outcome of Brown seems inevitable now, but at the time there were considerable doubts about what verdict the Supreme Court would render. Ewers, Justin, “Making History,” U.S. News & World Report, March 22, 2004, p. 76. The first cracks in segregation had already appeared by 1954, but Brown v. Board of Education was the legal thunderbolt that smashed the legal basis of segregation.

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Improving Integration and Performance Dobbs, Michael, “For Vouchers, a Mixed Report Card,” The Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2003, p. A1. Some private schools provide an outstanding education, some not so much; Milwaukee statistics suggest funding for vouchers is not draining public schools. Hubler, Eric, “Group: Mix Rich, Poor Students,” The Denver Post, Dec. 8, 2002, p. A1. After the apparent success of voluntary economic integration in North Carolina, hopes are high in Denver that the same can be achieved there. MacGillis, Alec, “Basing Affirmative Action on Income Changes Payoff,” The Baltimore Sun, May 25, 2003, p. 1C. Studies show that income-based affirmative action, as opposed to race-based, would actually decrease the number of blacks and Latinos at top colleges. Rimer, Sara, “Schools Try Integration by Income, Not Race,” The New York Times, May 8, 2003, p. A1. Cambridge, Mass., is one of a small but growing number of cities that are using economic status as the basis of school integration, not race. Thernstrom, Abigail, “Education’s Division Problem,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13, 2003, p. B17. A prominent educational researcher decries low educational performance among blacks and Latinos and praises charter schools as a way of closing the achievement gap that exists between white and minority students. Tienda, Marta, and Sunny Niu, “Texas’ 10 Percent Plan: The Truth Behind the Numbers,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 23, 2004, p. 10. An empirical study of Texas students sets the record straight about the actual effects of the 10 percent admissions plan. Toppo, Greg, “School Integration Helps in Game of Life,” USA Today, April 14, 2004, p. 6D. Interviews with the Class of 1980 show that most valued

an integrated education because it helped them to be more tolerant and to interact with people of other races. Winerip, Michael, “What Some Much-Noted Data Really Showed About Vouchers,” The New York Times, May 7, 2003, p. B12. A much-publicized study detailing the gains of students in voucher programs suffered from flaws in its methodology. Yardley, Jim, “Desperately Seeking Diversity,” The New York Times, April 14, 2002, Section 4A, p. 28. The University of Texas’ admissions plan admitting the top 10 percent of high school graduates has had effects on a broad stratum of Texas students, opening doors for some, closing them for others.

Recent Court Decisions “Judge Accepts Plan to End Chicago Desegregation Case He Calls Outdated,” The New York Times, March 3, 2004, p. B8. Saying that it’s time “for Big Brother to bow out,” a judge indicates he may soon agree to an end for the government’s desegregation decree affecting Chicago’s schools. Greenhouse, Linda, “The Supreme Court: Affirmative Action,” The New York Times, June 24, 2003, p. A1. Justice O’Connor maintains that race as a factor in a holistic evaluation of an applicant, not in a “mechanical way,” is consistent with the earlier Bakke ruling. Greenhouse, Linda, “The Supreme Court: School Tuition,” The New York Times, June 28, 2002, p. A1. The court’s 5-to-4 ruling upheld the use of public money for tuition at religious schools as part of taxpayer-funded voucher programs. Lane, Charles, “Affirmative Action for Diversity Is Upheld,” The Washington Post, June 24, 2003, p. A1.

Although the Michigan decisions upheld the principle of using race in college admissions, swing voter Sandra Day O’Connor noted that in 25 years racial preferences are not expected to be in use. Lee, Henry K., “Desegregation Plan Ruled OK,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 2004, p. B5. A judge rules that a long-standing desegregation plan for Berkeley, Calif., does not violate Proposition 209, the state’s law banning racial preferences. Schmidt, Peter, “Affirmative Action Fight Is Renewed in the States,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18, 2003, p. 9. Although the Supreme Court upheld race as a factor in college admissions, affirmative action opponents are still working through referendums and legislation.

Funding Disparities Olszewski, Lori, and Darnell Little, “School Spending Disparity Revealed,” Chicago Tribune, March 2, 2004, News Section, p. 1. With a court prepared to end a decades-old desegregation agreement, a study shows funding gaps; mostly Hispanic schools receive the least money. Richard, Alan, “Poor Districts Seen to Face ‘Funding Gaps’ in Many States,” Education Week, Sept. 4, 2002, p. 28. The richest quarter of school districts on average receive about $1,000 more per pupil than the poorest quarter, although in some places this tendency is reversed. Symonds, William, “Closing the School Gap,” Business Week, Oct. 14, 2002, p. 124. An outdated system for funding schools results in economic segregation between rich and poor districts; but high-spending districts sometimes have poor results.

CITING THE CQ RESEARCHER Sample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats vary, so please check with your instructor or professor. MLA STYLE

Jost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” The CQ Researcher 16 Nov. 2001: 945-68. APA STYLE

Jost, K. (2001, November 16). Rethinking the death penalty. The CQ Researcher, 11, 945-968. CHICAGO STYLE

Jost, Kenneth. “Rethinking the Death Penalty.” CQ Researcher, November 16, 2001, 945-968.


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