Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines efforts by the New York Times to critique its prewar intelligence reporting in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War. The newspaper featured several stories on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction using anonymous sources. In turn, these stories helped set the U.S. news agenda in the months before the start of the Iraq War. In the wake of revelations of faulty intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons, the Times received criticism over its reporting. In particular, the overuse of anonymous sourcing by reporter Judith Miller was blamed for relaying misleading information to readers. News sourcing raises tensions between journalism’s claims to being independent and, in practice, its entrenched reliance on official sources. This contrast is made more complicated by anonymous sourcing and the removal of attribution from public view. As a result, the controversial use of anonymous sources strikes at the core of the credibility of the news. The paper traces the criticisms of the New York Times’s prewar coverage as well as the response to its editor’s note a year into the war. The newspaper apologized for its prewar coverage and blamed both misinformation from Iraqi exiles as well as a newsroom culture driven by scoops. The Times attempted to repair damage to its credibility through restating the importance of skepticism as a norm of journalism. In doing so, the newspaper attempts to align the problematic practice of anonymous sourcing with the normative role of journalism in a democracy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Using the results of the first wave of the After the JD study, we compare initial career paths of both men and women lawyers who began their legal careers in 2000. We will present data on first jobs after passing the bar, evidence of movement or the intention to change positions. How do women's early legal careers differ from their male counterparts?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The last few years have seen a renaissance in field experimentation on voter mobilization, in large part due to the groundbreaking work by Alan Gerber and Donald Green (2000) that demonstrated how door-to-door contact can significantly increase turnout. As researchers have branched out from that experiment to explore further questions and nuances about how to increase voter participation, studies have focused on various subsets of the voting population, including Latinos. What do we know, five years later, about how to best increase Latino turnout? What sorts of questions are left unanswered by recent field experiments, and how can researchers move towards answering those questions? What sorts of activities are planned for the 2006 elections that will potentially further the field? This paper takes a look at what we know (looking back), what we don’t know, and what research should be done so that we will know (looking forward).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Recent writers on the nature and possibilities of ecological democracy have rightly stressed the need to look out from our immediate places and beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. This emphasis is not surprising, for an emphasis on global thinking is a long-established part of the green movement. Environmental issues cross state and national boundaries, which means that problems such as nuclear storage, global warming and loss of biodiversity must be addressed in ways that challenge traditional conceptions of sovereignty. Furthermore, hopes for comprehensive proactive measures rather than reactive responses to discrete immediate problems are based in the possibilities of multilateral decision-making that goes beyond issues of territoriality. In addition, the environmental legacy we leave for future generations requires global thinking that pays attention to imbalances of power in terms of North-South, human-nonhuman, gender, class, ethnicity and chronology. At the same time, the search for green democracy pushes us to look inward, focusing on the particulars of the ecological place in which we are situated. Green politics has a strong affinity for decentralization, and “act locally” is the second half of the ubiquitous green slogan, based on the pragmatic possibilities of effective environmental action at the community level. This focus on locality also has been tied to development of a sense of place, arising from the historical, personal and bioregional distinctiveness of the places to which we have become (or aspire to become) native. Finally, the importance of looking inward is strengthened by foodshed analysis, which points to the political and ethical demands for local food systems at the production, distribution and consumption levels. Discussions of ecological democracy, by pushing us to look in as well as look out, thus encompass an inherent and useful contrast between the particulars of the local landscape on which we stand and the non-boundedness of the ecological whole. As an informative model of this balance, ecoagriculture – sustainable agriculture that places both ecological holism and particulars of place in central roles – aptly illustrates this necessary tension, and in so doing, brings crucial issues of power into focus. In this paper, I examine several approaches to ecological democracy that clarify key aspects of the distinctions between looking in and looking out. I then turn to ecoagriculture, presenting it as a particularly useful model for delineating this tension.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study involves an experiment with 77 law students. It looks at the seprarability of preferences in cases involving multiple issues. I investigate whether decision-makers are able to separate their views on divisive policy matters from a seemingly neutral “threshold” decision they are asked to make in a complex case. Specifically, participants were given a mock legal brief containing identical legal arguments on both sides of a standing dispute. All participants were told that the issue arose in the context of a case where the issues of (1) abortion (2) free speech and (3) restrictions on the political expression of public employees were potentially salient in the dispute on the merits. The experiment involved a 2 x 2 factorial design where the content of the political expression at issue (pro-life vs. pro-choice) and the jurisdiction the case arose in (jurisdiction with direct authority on the standing issue vs. without direct authority on the standing issue) were experimentally controlled. Participants’ policy views were measured to test how they influenced the threshold standing decision. Findings demonstrate participants were able to separate views on abortion and restrictions on public employees from the standing decision. Opinions on free speech, however, did influence the standing decision a direction consistent with attitudinal hypotheses. The effect was more pronounced for participants in treatment conditions with no controlling legal authority on the standing issue.