Gluck & Schultz Bressman: Statutory Interpretation from the Inside: An Empirical Study of Congressional Drafting

Professor Abbe R. Gluck of Yale Law School and Associate Dean Lisa Schultz Bressman of Vanderbilt Law School have posted Statutory Interpretation from the Inside — An Empirical Study of Congressional Drafting, Delegation and the Canons: Part I, forthcoming in Stanford Law Review.

Here is the abstract:

What role should the realities of the legislative drafting process play in the theories and doctrines of statutory interpretation and administrative law? The ongoing debates frequently turn on empirical assumptions about how Congress drafts and what interpretive rules Congress knows, but there has been almost no testing of whether any of these assumptions reflect legislative reality. We have attempted to fill that void. This is the first of two Articles reporting the results of the most extensive empirical study to date — a survey of 137 congressional counsels drawn from both parties, both chambers of Congress and spanning multiple committees — on topics ranging from drafters’ knowledge and use of the textual and substantive canons of interpretation, to legislative history, the administrative law deference doctrines, the legislative process and the Court-Congress relationship.

Our findings have implications for virtually every swath of the interpretive debates. We can report, for instance, that there are some canons that our drafters know and use — Chevron and the presumption against preemption, for example, but that there are other canons that our drafters know, but consciously reject in favor of political or other considerations, including the presumption in favor of consistent usage, the rule against superfluities, and dictionary use; and still other canons, like Mead and noscitur a sociis, that our drafters do not know as legal rules but that seem to be accurate judicial reflections of how Congress drafts. Our interviews also elicited a treasure trove of information about key influences on the drafting process that legal doctrine rarely considers, from the variety of audiences for legislative history, to the way in which the personal reputation of particular agency heads affects delegation decisions, to the fact that drafting conventions depend on the type of statute being drafted and its path through Congress.

All of these findings, and many others, allow us to press for a more precise answer to one of the field’s foundational questions: that is, what should be the purpose of these canons of interpretation? Judges, often using the unhelpful generalization that they are Congress’s “faithful agents,” have legitimized these doctrines using a variety of conflicting justifications, some of which turn on empirical reality, some of which do not, and most of which aim to justify many different types of canons that seem to be doing very different types of work. Do the canons reflect how Congress actually drafts, and so effectuate legislative supremacy? Or do judges use the canons for more dialogical reasons, such as to encourage Congress to draft more precisely — and does Congress listen? Might the canons, despite how “neutral” some appear, instead be understood to effectuate judicial values that are external to the legislative process — such as advancing constitutional norms or imposing coherence on the U.S. Code? Our study illuminates this variety across the normative bases for the canons also reveals that each set of justifications rests on a very different vision of the judicial power and the Court-Congress relationship.

HT @rickhasen

Epstein, Landes, and Posner: The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice

Professor Dr. Lee Epstein, Professor Dr. William M. Landes, and Senior Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner, have published The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice (Harvard University Press, 2013).

Here is the publisher’s description:

Judges play a central role in the American legal system, but their behavior as decision-makers is not well understood, even among themselves. The system permits judges to be quite secretive (and most of them are), so indirect methods are required to make sense of their behavior. Here, a political scientist, an economist, and a judge work together to construct a unified theory of judicial decision-making. Using statistical methods to test hypotheses, they dispel the mystery of how judicial decisions in district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court are made.

The authors derive their hypotheses from a labor-market model, which allows them to consider judges as they would any other economic actors: as self-interested individuals motivated by both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of their work. In the authors’ view, this model describes judicial behavior better than either the traditional “legalist” theory, which sees judges as automatons who mechanically apply the law to the facts, or the current dominant theory in political science, which exaggerates the ideological component in judicial behavior. Ideology does figure into decision-making at all levels of the federal judiciary, the authors find, but its influence is not uniform. It diminishes as one moves down the judicial hierarchy from the Supreme Court to the courts of appeals to the district courts. As The Behavior of Federal Judges demonstrates, the good news is that ideology does not extinguish the influence of other components in judicial decision-making.

HT @law_book

Hinkle et al.: Theory & Empirical Analysis of Strategic Word Choice in District Court Opinions

Rachael K. Hinkle, JD, and Professor Dr. Andrew D. Martin, both of Washington University Department of Political Science, and colleagues, have published A Positive Theory and Empirical Analysis of Strategic Word Choice in District Court Opinions, Journal of Legal Analysis, 4(2), 402-444 (2012).

Here is the abstract:

Supported by numerous empirical studies on judicial hierarchies and panel effects, Positive Political Theory (PPT) suggests that judges engage in strategic use of opinion content—to further the policy outcomes preferred by the decision-making court. In this study, we employ linguistic theory to study the strategic use of opinion content at a granular level—investigating whether the specific word choices judges make in their opinions is consistent with the competitive institutional story of PPT regarding judicial hierarchies. In particular, we examine the judges’ pragmatic use of the linguistic operations known as “hedging”—language serving to enlarge the truth set for a particular proposition, rendering it less definite and therefore less assailable—and “intensifying”—language restricting the possible truth-value of a proposition and making a statement more susceptible to falsification. Our principal hypothesis is that district court judges not ideologically aligned with the majority of the overseeing circuit judges use more hedging language in their legal reasoning in order to insulate these rulings from reversal. We test the theory empirically by analyzing constitutional criminal procedure, racial and sexual discrimination, and environmental opinions in the federal district courts from 1998 to 2001. Our results demonstrate a statistically significant increase in the use of certain types of language as the ideological distance between a district court judge and the overseeing circuit court judges increases.

Legal Communication Papers @ NCA 2012

Many papers on legal communication were presented at NCA 2012: The 98th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association, held November 15-18, 2012 in Orlando, Florida, USA. Here is a list of those I could identify. For abstracts and full text, please contact the authors. (If you know of other papers on legal communication presented at NCA 2012, please feel free to identify them in the comments to this post. Click here for the complete NCA 2012 program.)

• Daniel Bergan and Richard T. Cole, Michigan State University: Call Your Legislator: The Impact of Citizen Contacts on Legislative Voting
• Mike Bergmaier, Penn State University: From Miscegenation to Contemporary Marriage Equality: Marriage as a Function of Ideological State Apparatuses
• Lacey Brown, University of West Florida, Chair: Panel: Trayvon Martin and COMMunity: Exploring the Interpretive Frames of the “Stand Your Ground” Law in Shaping 21st Century American Communities
• Kathryn A. Cady and Kerith M. Woodyard, Northern Illinois University: All the Working Woman’s Friends: Protective Labor Legislation and the Early ERA Controversy
• Peter Odell Campbell, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: The Abject of Community: The Majoritarian ‘Fourth Persona’ in U.S. Equality Rhetoric
• Kelly Carr, University of Baltimore: Inventing Continuity While Enacting Change: The Supreme Court Opinion Writing Process
• Michael S. Chouinard, Florida State University: Judge or Activist? Vaughn Walker and the Overturning of Proposition 8
• Hayley Jeanne Cole, Univ of Missouri, Columbia: Same Sex Marriage Ads: Don’t Mention It: A Content Analysis of the No on Prop 8 Ads
• Josh Compton and Paul Klaas, Dartmouth College: Oh, the Places Legal Rhetoric can Go: Prosecuting and Defending Characters of Dr. Seuss’s Bartholomew and the Oobleck
• Christopher R. Darr, Indiana Univ, Kokomo, and Harry C. Strine IV, Bloomsburg University: Partisanship, Ideology and Advice and Consent: A Content Analysis of Incivility in Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings
• Daniel Emery, University of Oklahoma: Property Crimes: Castle Laws, the 2008 Mortgage Crisis, and Privatization of Public Space
• Jerri Faris, Purdue University: Celebrating COMMunity with Ex-prisoners: Engaged Communication Scholarship in a Reentry Court
• Ryan P. Fuller, Univ of California, Santa Barbara: Agenda Denial Strategies in Regulating Vertical Integration: The Case of California SB 1765
• Joshua Gonzalez, University of Iowa: Undignified: Poverty and Personhood in the 1996 Welfare Reform Debates
• Nichola Gutgold, Penn State Univ, Lehigh Valley: The Enactment Rhetoric of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• Leslie J. Harris, Univ of Wisconsin, Milwaukee: Spousal Correction or Spousal Cruelty? The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Domestic Violence
• Amy Hasinoff, McGill University: Social Media and Sexuality: The Missing Discourse of Consent in New Sexting Legislation
• Erik Jimenez, California State University, Los Angeles: Are You a Mexican? Investigating the Devastating Implications of Alabama’s Hammon-Beason (HB) 56
• Katherine R. Knobloch, University of Washington, and John W. Gastil, Penn State University: Civic (Re)Socialization: The Educative Effects of Deliberative Participation
• Jeff Kurr, Baylor University: President Obama’s Rhetorical Pivot in Avoiding the Detainment of Deliberation over Closing the Detention Facilities at Guantanamo Bay
• Derek Lackaff, Elon University: Open Governance Experiments in the Icelandic Context
• Owen H. Lynch, Southern Methodist University: Lowering the Bar or the Important Role of Humor in The Legal Community
• Carol L. Mammel, University of the Fraser Valley: The Osoyoos Indian Band, Canadian Wildlife Service, and the Species at Risk Act: Lack of consultation, and perpetuation of underdevelopment on reserves
• Bryan J. McCann, Wayne State Univ: Between Thugs and Innocents: Racialized Violence and the Perogative of ‘Self Defense’ in the Trayvon Martin Case
• Robert Mills, Northwestern University: The Harmonious Vocalics of Judicial Unanimity: Authorship and Legitimacy in Cooper v. Aaron
• Jay Reynolds Patterson, Georgia State University: Contemporary Legal Discourse and the Graeco-Roman Tradition: The 2009 OJ Simpson Kidnapping Trial
• Carlo A. Pedrioli, Barry University: Constructing Modern-day U.S. Legal Education through Rhetoric: Langdell, Ames, and the Scholar Model of the Law Professor Persona
• Preconference: Reading the Rhetoric of Civil Rights Sit-Ins
• Alessandra Renzi, Ryerson University: Get Out of My Park: Occupying Discourse on Public Use
• Robert Richards, Penn State University: Legal Narrative in the Citizens’ Panel: Identifying Theories to Explain Storytelling in a Small Group Deliberation about Ballot Initiatives
• Brandi Dale Rogers, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Science, Law, and the Argumentative Antecedents of Fetal Personhood: A Rhetorical Analysis of Early Prenatal Torts
• Clarke Rountree, University of Alabama, Huntsville: Reversing Course: Supreme Court Overruling in an Early Admiralty Case
• Clariza Ruiz De Castilla, University of Texas, Austin: Citizenship in the Sunshine State: Florida News Coverage on Arizona’s SB 1070
• Kristina Ruiz-Mesa, Univ of Colorado, Boulder: COMMunities of Practice and Discourses of a DREAM: How Congress and Fox News Represent ‘Others’ within the DREAM Act
• Susan H. Sarapin, Troy University: Forget about It! The Ironic Effects of Instructions to Disregard Perry, Ben, Gil, and Ducky
• Susan H. Sarapin, Troy University: Toward a Causal Explanation of ‘The CSI Effect’: Self-efficacy as Mediator between Fictional Crime-TV Exposure and Verdict Certainty
• Joseph Sery, University of San Francisco: ‘Fruit from the Poisonous Tree’: The Rhetorical Strategy behind Mapp v. Ohio
• Rohini Singh, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Turning the Tables: Refutation by Reversal in Clarence Darrow’s Plea for Leopold and Loeb
• Jeff Swift, North Carolina State University: The Invisible Hand of the Speech Marketplace: The Supreme Court’s Currency Manipulation
• Elycia M. Taylor, Catherine Knight Steele, and Emilie Lucchesi, University of Illinois, Chicago: Protective or Oppressive? Analyzing Death Penalty Framing
• Dave Tell, University of Kansas, and Eric C. Miller, Penn State University: Rhetoric and Judicial Activism: The Case of Hillary Goodridge v. Department of Public Health
• Mary Lynn L. Veden, Univ of Arkansas, Fayetteville: The Alchemy and Antirrhetic of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish
• Rachel Avon A. Whidden, Lake Forest College: Proving Science in Court: Vaccine Injury Payouts and the Legitimization of the MMR-Autism Connection

Zorn et al.: Organized Interests and Agenda Setting in the U.S. Supreme Court Revisited

Professor Dr. Christopher Zorn of Penn State University, and Professor Dr. Gregory Caldeira and Professor Dr. John (Jack) Wright, both of Ohio State University, presented a paper entitled Organized Interests and Agenda Setting in the U.S. Supreme Court Revisited, at CELS 2012: Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, held 9-10 November at Stanford Law School, Stanford, California, USA.

Here is the abstract:

We reevaluate the influence of amici curiae on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to grant certiorari. Using expanded data on four representative Court terms, we find that at the same time that the number of amicus filings on certiorari have grown — and perhaps owing to it — the influence of those briefs on the probability of the Court granting certiorari has steadily declined between 1968 and 2007. In addition, we find that the positive influence of briefs in opposition to certiorari noted in some earlier work appears to be an artifact of a particular Term. Among other things, these findings hold implications for the extent to which case selection effects might bias empirical scholarship on the Supreme Court.

Legal Informatics and Legal Communication @ ILEC 5

Several legal informatics or legal communication papers or presentations have been given at ILEC 5: The 2012 International Legal Ethics Conference, held 12-14 July 2012 in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

The Twitter hashtags for the conference were:

• #ilec2012
• #ilec5
• #ilecv

Here are archived Twitter tweets from the conference, in .csv format:

• Archived Tweets with hashtag #ILEC2012
• Archived Tweets with hashtag #ilec5
• Archived Tweets with hashtag #ilecv

Click here for the conference program.

Topics include confidentiality of lawyer-client communications, legal educational technology, empirical methods for the study of legal ethics, the quantitative measurement of legal ethical behavior, virtual law practice and other forms of law practice technology, and quantitative legal prediction.

Escresa and Garoupa on Judicial Decision Making on the Philippine Supreme Court, an Empirical Analysis 1986-2010

Dr. Laarni Escresa of Institut für Recht und Ökonomik der Universität Hamburg and Professor Dr. Nuno Garoupa of the University of Illinois College of Law, have published Judicial Politics in Unstable Democracies: The Case of the Philippine Supreme Court, an Empirical Analysis 1986-2010, forthcoming in Asian Journal of Law and Economics.

Here is the abstract:

In this paper we investigate empirically the determinants of judicial behavior at the Philippine Supreme Court in the period 1986-2010. Our results show an important alignment between individual Justices and the interests of the presidential appointers, although it varies across presidential terms. We discuss these empirical results in the context of the Philippine unstable democracy and the implications for the comparative literature on judicial behavior.

HT Professor Dr. Michael Heise.

Klerman on The Selection of 13th-Century Disputes for Litigation

Professor Dr. Daniel M. Klerman of the University of Southern California School of Law has published The Selection of 13th-Century Disputes for Litigation, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 9, 320-346 (2012).

Click here for a pre-print of the article.

Here is the abstract:

Priest and Klein’s seminal 1984 article argued that litigated cases differ systematically and predictably from settled cases. This article tests the Priest-Klein selection model using a data set of 13th-century English cases. These cases are especially informative because juries rendered verdicts even in settled cases, so one can directly compare verdicts in settled and litigated cases. The results are consistent with the predictions of the Priest-Klein article, as well as with the asymmetric-information selection models developed by Hylton and Shavell.

Legal Informatics / Legal Communication Papers @ ICA 2012

The following legal informatics or legal communication papers are being presented at ICA 2012: The Conference of the International Communication Association, being held 24-28 May 2012, in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. (Click here for the full conference program. The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #ica12. If you know of other legal communication or legal informatics papers presented at the conference, please feel free to mention them in the comments):

• Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa, U of Tampere: The Effects of Relational Tensions on Optimal Listening in Legal Communication Relationships
• Cheryl Ann Bishop, Quinnipiac U: Access to Information in the European Court of Human Rights
• Laura W. Black and Anna Marie Wiederhold, Ohio U: “I Agree With All of That, But…” Examining Expressions of Difference in Citizen Discussion Groups
• Emily A. Dolan, Syracuse U: Exploring Privacy on Online Social Networks in Civil Cases
• Dmitry Epstein, Cornell U; Rebecca B. Vernon, Cornell eRulemaking Initiative: Not by Technology Alone: The “Analog” Aspects of Online Public Engagement in Rulemaking
• Jessica Fridy and Karen Tracy, U of Colorado: Majority Rule or a Minority Right? Discursive Orientations Toward Democratic Ideals in a U.S. Public Hearing
• Howard Giles, Douglas Bonilla, Daniel Linz, and Michelle L. Gomez,U of California, Santa Barbara: Police Stops of and Interactions With Latino and White (Non-Latino) Drivers: Extensive Policing and Communication Accommodation
• Jeffrey A. Gottfried, U of Pennsylvania, Eran N. Ben-Porath, Social Science Research Solutions, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, U of Pennsylvania: Do Judges Perceive Value in Voter Guides for Judicial Elections?
• Karina Horsti, New York U; Saara Pellander, U of Helsinki: Family in Migration Debates: Polarised Discourses in Finnish Media and Parliament
• Robert Huesca, Trinity U; Roopali Mukherjee, CUNY – Queens College; Eren McGinnis, Dos Vatos Productions: Precious Knowledge: A Film and Discussion
• Shazia Iftkhar, U of Michigan: “The Republic is Lived With the Face Uncovered”: Framing the Legal Ban on the ‘Burqa’ in France
• Oyvind Ihlen and Kjersti Thorbjornsrud, U of Oslo: Tears vs. Rules and Regulations: Media Strategies and Framing of Immigration Issues
• Melissa A. Johnson, North Carolina State U: Battleground Arizona: Visual Fidelity in Network News Coverage of Arizona’s Immigration Law
• Michael K Park, U of Southern California: Juror Misconduct 2.0: The Right to an Impartial Jury in the Age of Social Networking
• Jennifer M. Proffitt and Margot A. Susca, Florida State U: Follow the Money: The Entertainment Software Association Attack on Video Game Regulation
• Ryan Rogers, U of North Carolina: The Violence of a Generation: Supreme Court Ruling on Regulating Violent Video Games for Minors
• Leah Sprain, Colorado State U: Speaking as “Experts” and “Citizens” in Public Meetings
• T.T. Sreekumar and Shobha Vadrevu, National U of Singapore: “If I Can, I Legislate. If I Can’t, I Gazette”: Political Twitterati and Democracy in Singapore
• Inger Lisbeth Stole, U of Illinois: The 1930s: Consumers Reactions to Advertising and Demands for Federal Regulation
• Chad Tew and Amy Jorgensen, U of Southern Indiana: Accused and Confused: An Analysis of YouTube Reaction Videos to Copyright Violations
• Mercedes Vigon, Florida International U: Not Business as Usual: Spanish–Language TV Coverage of Arizona’s Immigration Law, April-May 2010

For full text of papers, please contact the authors.

Legal Communication Papers @ NCA 2011

Many papers on legal communication were presented at NCA 11: The 97th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association, held November 17-20, 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Here is a list of those I could identify. For abstracts and full text, please contact the authors. (If you know of other papers on legal communication presented at NCA 2011, please feel free to identify them in the comments to this post. Click here for the complete NCA 2011 program.)

• Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa, University of Tampere: Professional Communication in Courtrooms: American and Finnish Listening Concepts.
• Brita Anderson, University of Pittsburgh: The Law: Rhetorically Constructed, Aesthetic, and Sublime.
• Jennifer Biedendorf, Penn State University: The Ratification Debate over the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Communicating International Law.
• Peter Odell Campbell, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: The Procedural Queer: Substantive Due Process, Lawrence v. Texas, and Queer Rhetorical Futures.
• Jane Elmes-Crahall, Wilkes University; Mark Congdon Jr., University of North Carolina, Greensboro: Words Do Matter: A Diachronic Analysis of Judicial, Legislative and Advocacy Rhetoric on Behalf of Public Support for Children with Disabilities.
• James Farrell, University of New Hampshire: Daniel Webster for the Prosecution: The Moral Drama of the Salem Murder Trial.
• John W. Gastil, Penn State University; Katherine Knobloch, University of Washington; Justin Reedy, University of Washington; Mark Henkels, Western Oregon University; Katherine Cramer Walsh, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Hearing a Public Voice in Micro-Level Deliberation and Macro-Level Politics: Assessing the Impact of the Citizens’ Initiative Review on the Oregon Electorate.
• Ian E. Hill, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: ‘Preaching Dynamite’: Ironic Metaphor at the Haymarket Trial.
• Erica Hollander, Metropolitan State College of Denver: Teaching Debate from a Courtroom Orientation.
• Michael E. Holmes, Ball State University: Negotiating ‘Best Interest:’ The Voice of the Advocate in the Foster Care System.
• Sharon E. Jarvis, Univ of Texas, Austin; Clariza Ruiz De Castilla, Univ of Texas, Austin: Are Latinos Citizens? Voice Given to Labels and Rights in Coverage of Arizona’s Immigration Reform Legislation.
• James Jasinski, Univ of Puget Sound; Dustin Buehler, University of Arkansas, Fayette; Catherine Langford, Texas Tech Univ; Carlo A. Pedrioli, Barry University; Mary Lynn L. Veden; Univ of Arkansas, Fayetteville: Dissonant Voices, Democratice Choices: The Rhetoric of Apportionment in Baker v. Carr.
• Jason Jordan, University of North Texas: De Jure Blackness: Racialization in Brown v. Board of Education.
• Amber Kelsie, Univ of Pittsburgh: Speaking For Others: The Post-Feminist, Post-Racial Politics of Anti-Abortion Legislation.
• Katherine Knobloch, University of Washington; John W. Gastil, Penn State University; Justin Reedy, University of Washington; Katherine Cramer Walsh, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Did They Deliberate? Applying a Theoretical Model of Democratic Deliberation to the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review.
• Katherine Knobloch, University of Washington; Rory Raabe, University of Washington: Exploring the Effects of Deliberative Participation through Panelist Self-Reports.
• Michael R. Kramer, Saint Mary’s College: The Utility of Law-Related Examples in Communication Education.
• William Lewis, Drake University (Chair): Voices In, Of, and Against “The Law”: Roundtable on Alternative Pedagogies for Teaching Legal Communication as Other than Professional Preparation.
• Nneka Logan, Georgia State University: Corporate Speech Rights and Neoliberalism: An Analysis of Supreme Court Discourse as Constitutive Rhetoric.
• Stephen H. Macek, North Central College: The Chicago Media, the Labor Movement and the Struggle over Taft-Hartley.
• Sara L. McKinnon, Univ of Wisconsin, Madison: Geopolitics and Human Rights Rhetoric in Recent Mexican LGBT Asylum Cases in the United States.
• Nick Merola, Univ of Texas, Austin; Vysali Soundararajan, University of Texas, Austin: Interrupting Justice: Interruptions in Supreme Court Proceedings.
• Eric C. Miller, Penn State University: From Dayton to Dover: The Rhetorical Evolution of American Anti-Evolutionism.
• Ashley R. Muddiman, Univ of Texas, Austin: Hear Our Voice! Incivility(?) in the 2009 Health Care Protests.
• Jeffrey A. Nelson, Kent State University: The Connecticut Supreme Court Decision on Same-Sex Marriage: A Departure From Disgust.
• Elizabeth A. Petre, Southern Illinois Univ, Carbondale; James T. Petre, Southern Illinois Univ, Carbondale: ‘There Are Certain Things Only a Government Can Do’: Obama’s Rhetorical ‘Voice’ about the Role of Government in Food Regulation.
• Stephen E. Rahko, Indiana University: Citizens United and its Discontents or Musings on a Rhetoric of Corporate Law.
• Susan H. Sarapin, Purdue University, Emily Haas, Purdue University, Scott McWilliams PhD, Jurinex Legal Services, Rahul Mitra, Purdue University, Melanie Morgan, Purdue University: Optimizing Voices from the Witness Box: The Effects of Physician-Defendant Testimony on Findings of Nurse-Defendant Negligence in Medical Malpractice.
• Jennifer Scarduzio, Arizona State University; Sarah J. Tracy, Arizona State University: Paradoxes, Dirty Work, and Intermediary Emotional Labor: The Emotional Work of Female Judges, Bailiffs, and Clerks.
• Susan A. Sci, Regis University: Between French and Islamic Law: Cennet Doganay’s Embodied Argument and le Loi 2004-228.
• Joseph Sery, Univ of Pittsburgh: Cultivating Virtue: Rhetoric, Stoic Law, and the Good Community.
• Lindsey Shook, University of Kansas: Inventing Bracton: Questioning the Medieval Concept of Invention in Law and its Relation to ‘Voice’ in Modern Rape Myths through the Bracton Legal Treatise.
• Kami J. Silk, Michigan State University; Samantha Nazione, Michigan State University; Lindsay Neuberger, University of Central Florida; Sandi W. Smith, Michigan State University; Charles K. Atkin, Michigan State University: The Role of Involvement, Scientific Literacy, Education, and Message Format in Influencing the Lay Public’s Regulatory Attitude about PFOA Exposure.
• John M. Sloop, Vanderbilt University: Gender Laws: Caster Semenya and the Third World War.
• James Smith, Univ of Missouri, Columbia: Political Blogs and the Permanent Campaign: A Functional Analysis of the Health Care Debate.
• Zack Stiegler, Indiana Univ of Pennsylvania; Dan Sprumont, Indiana University of Pennyslvania: Mediated Voices: Framing the Net Neutrality Debate.
• Matthew Thornton, Louisiana State University: The Case of Corrupted Coverage – Press Coverage and Framing Effects of the Citizens United Decision.
• Robert N. Yale, Purdue University: The Influence of Narrative Believability on Juror Verdicts and Verdict Confidence: A Test of the Narrative Believability Scale (NBS-22).