Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this study, we examine why judges on state courts of last resort leave the bench. Our analysis is limited to the 509 judges seated (from 1964 to 2008) in elective states where the governor is able to appoint interim replacements. We find that while many judges left voluntarily through retirement or resignation, some judges are constrained in their departure decisions by mandatory retirement ages or the unpredictable nature of the federal judicial confirmation process. Nearly 20% of the judges, furthermore, left involuntarily through electoral defeat, being removed from office, or serious health problems. We also find evidence that judges who depart the bench voluntarily are more likely than those who depart involuntarily to create an interim appointment opportunity for the governor. Our results indicate that a governor’s ability to influence the composition of the state bench in otherwise elective states is more likely to be due to a voluntary decision made by a sitting judge than due to a judge’s involuntary removal.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Migration historians have outlined the various kinds of migration shaping African American History in the early twentieth century. But the predominant migration narrative emphasized for African American southerners during the Jim Crow period has depicted a collective centrifugal experience, with black southerners fleeing deadly epicenters of racial violence, poverty, and discrimination as they headed northward or westward to freedom and economic opportunity. Their presumed unidirectional movement away from the south is generally described as constructive while the decisions of others to remain in the South are often associated with dearth or stasis. Lillian Bertha Jones Horace's many migrations and returns to, from, or within southern, western, northern, and eastern spaces—including Texas, Kentucky, Illinois, Colorado, and New York—affirm that migration was more nuanced than the predominant South-to-North paradigm suggests. Pushed and pulled by various life exigencies, including educational pursuits, professional opportunities, as well as family and personal matters, Horace never left the South "for good,” but departed and returned many times over the course of her life. Her nuanced migration experience, which began and ended in Texas, suggests the need for examining what I call "boomerang migration" and its implications for African American History in general and the history of African American southern women in particular.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) enacted in 1996 and commonly referred to as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) was a high priority item on the 107th Congressional calendar for reauthorization. While the law received hearings in both chambers, and House and Senate members introduced several pieces of legislation, it was not reauthorized and expired on September 30th 2002. Since expiring, several Continuing Resolutions (CR’s) have ensured its funding, but the legislation still has not been reauthorized. Several problems result from Congresses failure to reauthorize TANF. Beyond the policy limitations and damage to the program and its recipients, political struggles and partisan politics divide the issue resulting in inaction and an elevation of controversy. This paper examined key pieces of legislation in both the House and the Senate that were proposed and marked-up, it also examined committee and floor statements, voting records, press releases, public interviews and statements, and published political agendas proposed by Congress. Politics, while very much a part of legislating appear to be the primary factor in explaining why TANF was not reauthorized. In this paper, an argument will be made demonstrating how Senator Daschle constrained votes in the Senate in light of midterm elections as an attempt to maintain party power. The author will argue that politics took priority over poverty.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In 2005, Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” the unassuming little masterpiece that quietly ushered in the modern age of poetry, will celebrate its 150th birthday. Remarkably, in those 150 years Whitman’s work has lost none of its initial luster: few poets in American history, even to this day, have managed to approach its power (and popular appeal). More importantly, though, Whitman’s work remains powerful not only as a work of literature, but as a work of political thought; indeed, Whitman’s inclusivist message may be more relevant (and necessary) than ever.

Previous work on Whitman’s democratic nature has been illuminating but remains incomplete. My work focuses on the idea of the oversoul, the all-encompassing individual, as it manifests itself in “Leaves of Grass” (and especially “Song of Myself”). The “democratic individual” Whitman describes in such vivid detail in “Song of Myself” and elsewhere is not reducible to a single individual, but serves to emphasize the unity-within-diversity of all individuals—their fundamental sameness, as members of the human race, in spite of all their (essentially superficial) differences. Whitman’s oversoul is robust, strong, forward-thinking, and above all unbounded, incapable of being limited by class, gender, language, or national boundaries. Whitman “sings America,” to be sure, but “Leaves of Grass” is also a song of humanity in general.

It is this aspect of Whitman’s poetry that we as political thinkers should examine today. Whitman wrote “Leaves of Grass” in reaction to the growing political discord and division he saw racking his country—in reaction to the struggle being waged, in many cases to the death, against the movement for national unity. “Leaves of Grass,” in this context, serves as a powerful defense of unity, a definitive rejoinder to the anti-democratic, anti-progressive forces that sought to destroy it—and preserve their own exclusivist, us-and-them mentality—at all costs.

Today, the struggle for unity continues on a different front, as reactionary movements on the left and right wage open war on the prevailing trend towards internationalism. Such movements are rapidly gaining in popularity, in America and elsewhere, bolstered by notions of fundamental difference, fear of progress, and exclusivist values. In America, these movements have attempted to appropriate the tradition of American political and social thought, casting themselves as heirs to what they perceive as a provincial, nationalist, and even nativist heritage. Focusing on “Leaves of Grass,” however, my paper will emphasize the distinctly cosmopolitan nature of American thought, and examine how our intellectual history may serve as a powerful rejoinder to these reactionary forces.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper is an initial attempt to address the somewhat shopworn but yet still compelling question whether the exercise of judicial power and review undermine aspirations for representative democracy. To get some measure beyond the shopworn it promotes a pragmatic approach to the question of judicial power and review.