Voice, Trust, and Memory

Voice, Trust, and Memory PDF Author: Melissa S. Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822785
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Does fair political representation for historically disadvantaged groups require their presence in legislative bodies? The intuition that women are best represented by women, and African-Americans by other African-Americans, has deep historical roots. Yet the conception of fair representation that prevails in American political culture and jurisprudence--what Melissa Williams calls "liberal representation"--concludes that the social identity of legislative representatives does not bear on their quality as representatives. Liberal representation's slogan, "one person, one vote," concludes that the outcome of the electoral and legislative process is fair, whatever it happens to be, so long as no voter is systematically excluded. Challenging this notion, Williams maintains that fair representation is powerfully affected by the identity of legislators and whether some of them are actually members of the historically marginalized groups that are most in need of protection in our society. Williams argues first that the distinctive voice of these groups should be audible within the legislative process. Second, she holds that the self-representation of these groups is necessary to sustain their trust in democratic institutions. The memory of state-sponsored discrimination against these groups, together with ongoing patterns of inequality along group lines, provides both a reason to recognize group claims and a way of distinguishing stronger from weaker claims. The book closes by proposing institutions that can secure fair representation for marginalized groups without compromising principles of democratic freedom and equality.

Voice, Trust, and Memory

Voice, Trust, and Memory PDF Author: Melissa S. Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822785
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Does fair political representation for historically disadvantaged groups require their presence in legislative bodies? The intuition that women are best represented by women, and African-Americans by other African-Americans, has deep historical roots. Yet the conception of fair representation that prevails in American political culture and jurisprudence--what Melissa Williams calls "liberal representation"--concludes that the social identity of legislative representatives does not bear on their quality as representatives. Liberal representation's slogan, "one person, one vote," concludes that the outcome of the electoral and legislative process is fair, whatever it happens to be, so long as no voter is systematically excluded. Challenging this notion, Williams maintains that fair representation is powerfully affected by the identity of legislators and whether some of them are actually members of the historically marginalized groups that are most in need of protection in our society. Williams argues first that the distinctive voice of these groups should be audible within the legislative process. Second, she holds that the self-representation of these groups is necessary to sustain their trust in democratic institutions. The memory of state-sponsored discrimination against these groups, together with ongoing patterns of inequality along group lines, provides both a reason to recognize group claims and a way of distinguishing stronger from weaker claims. The book closes by proposing institutions that can secure fair representation for marginalized groups without compromising principles of democratic freedom and equality.

Voice, Trust, and Memory

Voice, Trust, and Memory PDF Author: Melissa S. Williams
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691057385
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
A presentation of the argument that fair political representation for disadvantaged groups requires their presence in legislative bodies, which states that this can be done without compromising principles of democratic freedom and equality.

The Science of Perception and Memory

The Science of Perception and Memory PDF Author: Professor Daniel Reisberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190204508
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
A robbery victim tries to remember how the crime unfolded and who was present at the scene. A medical patient recalls the doctor saying that the pain in her side wasn't worrisome, and now that the tumor is much larger, she's suing. An investigation of insider trading hinges on someone's memory of exactly what was said at a particular business meeting. In these and countless other examples, our ability to remember our experiences is crucial for the justice system. The problem, though, is that perception and memory are fallible. How often do our eyes or memories deceive us? Is there some way to avoid these errors? Can we specify the circumstances in which perceptual or memory errors are more or less likely to occur? Professor Daniel Reisberg tackles these questions by drawing on the available science and his personal experience training attorneys. He provides detailed pragmatic advice that will prove helpful to law enforcement, prosecutors, defenders, and anyone else who hopes to maximize the quality of the evidence available to the courts -- whether the evidence is coming from witnesses, victims, or defendants. This book is carefully rooted in research but written in a way that will make it fully accessible to non-scientists working in the justice system. Early chapters provide an overview of the relevant science and a broad portrait of how perception and memory function. Later chapters offer practical solutions for navigating situations involving eyewitness identifications, remembered conversations, evidence obtained from interviews with children, confession evidence, and the risks of false confession.

Law, Democracy and Solidarity in a Post-national Union

Law, Democracy and Solidarity in a Post-national Union PDF Author: Erik Oddvar Eriksen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134042817
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Investigates how the values of the rule of law, solidarity and democracy can be understood in the European Union in order ensure the sustainability of the European political order.

Secession and Self-Determination

Secession and Self-Determination PDF Author: Stephen Macedo
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814756891
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The many questions that surround movements for secession and self-determination are both practically urgent and theoretically perplexing. The United States settled its secession crisis in the 1860s. But the trauma and unfinished business of those events are still with us. Around the world secession and self-determination are the key issues that cause strife and instability. This volume provides an unusually comprehensive consideration of the many challenges of law and political philosophy that accompany them, and offers theoretical insights that provide guidance for policy. Among the questions considered are: should the international community recognize a right to secede and, if so, what conditions must be satisfied before the right can be asserted? Should secession and its conditions be recognized within domestic constitutions? Secession is the most extreme form of political separation and there are modes of self-determination short of it, including indigenous peoples' self-government and minority language rights. To what degree can these intrastate autonomy arrangements help ameliorate the injustices faced by indigenous groups?

Cowboy Politics

Cowboy Politics PDF Author: John S. Nelson
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498549489
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
The politics of popular westerns are surprising in substance and significance, especially of late. Cowboy Politics shows how westerns in literature, cinema, and television face the challenges of Western Civilization even more than the perils of American frontiers. Its strategy is to compare key westerns with major theories of modern and postmodern politics. So it analyzes novels from Owen Wister to Zane Grey and Larry McMurtry. It focuses on films from the western revival beginning in the 1990s and featuring Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, while its interest in TV stretches from singing cowboys and Gunsmoke to David Milch’s Deadwood. Critics are apt to find in westerns the modern politics of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. They tap devices of individuality, rationality, contract, sovereign enforcement, and representation to overcome the chaotic violence of a wild zone. Cowboy Politics examines how westerns often find such measures insufficient to tame the West as a culture of honor and anger that deteriorates into feud-al vengeance. Instead westerns see the West as the sunset land that is already growing old and moving on. So westerns seek fresh starts informed by comparing civilizations more than demonizing savages. Westerns worry that modern politics devolve into exploitation, oppression, spectacle, and terror. So they pursue supplements in such postmodern politics as republicanism, perfectionism, populism, feminism, and environmentalism. Especially westerns explore politics of persuasive speech-in-action-in-public, doing beauty, and self-reliance in the modes of Hannah Arendt and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The first two chapters of Cowboy Politics explain how westerns do political theory for popular audiences by making many of our myths: the symbolic stories of individuals and communities which we live daily. The next three chapters trace the initially modern theories of government in many westerns. Then western turns to republican honor, rhetoric, response-ability, and character tracking occupy the following four chapters. And these set the stage for another four chapters on western attention to postmodern terror, mythmaking, celebrity, spectacle, and forgiveness. The final two chapters analyze how “late,” “satirical,” and “transformative” westerns develop realist defenses for their surprisingly postmodern politics.

Humanitarian Intervention

Humanitarian Intervention PDF Author: American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. Meeting
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814758312
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. All are examples where humanitarian intervention has been called into action. This timely and important new volume explores the legal and moral issues which emerge when a state uses military force in order to protect innocent people from violence perpetrated or permitted by the government of that state. Humanitarian intervention can be seen as a moral duty to protect but it is also subject to misuse as a front for imperialism without regard to international law. In Humanitarian Intervention, the contributors explore the many questions surrounding the issue. Is humanitarian intervention permitted by international law? If not, is it nevertheless morally permissible or morally required? Realistically, might not the main consequence of the humanitarian intervention principle be that powerful states will coerce weak ones for purposes of their own? The current debate is updated by two innovations in particular, the first being the shift of emphasis from the permissibility of intervening to the responsibility to intervene, and the second an emerging conviction that the response to humanitarian crises needs to be collective, coordinated, and preemptive. The authors shed light on the timely debate of when and how to intervene and when, if ever, not to. Contributors: Carla Bagnoli, Joseph Boyle, Anthony Coates, Thomas Franck, Brian D. Lepard, Catherine Lu, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Terry Nardin, Thomas Pogge, Melissa S. Williams, and Kok-Chor Tan.

Representation and Democratic Theory

Representation and Democratic Theory PDF Author: David Laycock
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774841001
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
With public confidence in representative institutions dropping to distressing levels, it is time for political theorists to reconnect issues of representation to considerations of justice, rights, citizenship, pluralism, and community. Representation and Democratic Theory investigates theoretical and practical aspects of innovative political representation in the early twenty-first century. It reveals the complexity of contemporary political representation and the importance of re-invigorating public life outside legislatures, political parties, and competitive elections. A crucial supplement to empirical studies of conventional political representation this book offers a timely and thought-provoking contribution to contemporary democratic theory. It will be a necessary and welcome addition to the libraries of many political and social scientists.

Epistemic Liberalism

Epistemic Liberalism PDF Author: Adam James Tebble
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317310322
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
In the wake of what has come to be called the ‘cultural turn’, it is often asked how the state should respond to the different and sometimes conflicting justice claims made by its citizens and what, ultimately, is the purpose of justice in culturally diverse societies. Building upon the work of a diversity of theorists, this book demonstrates that there is a distinct ‘epistemic’ tradition of liberalism that can be used to critique contemporary responses to cultural diversity and their underlying principles of justice. It critically examines multicultural, nationalist and liberal egalitarian approaches and argues that an epistemic account of liberalism, that emphasises social complexity rather than cultural diversity or homogeneity, is the most appropriate response to the question of justice in modern culturally diverse societies. Epistemic Liberalism will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary political theory and philosophy, liberal political theory and the politics of culture and identity.

Political Representation In India

Political Representation In India PDF Author: Abhay V Datar
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9389812542
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Political Representation in India: Ideas and Contestations, 1908–1952 maps extensive and wide-ranging debates, marked by contestations and strident demands on political representation in colonial India. Further, it explores these themes during the Constitution-framing process. These debates, previously overlooked, are significant for they helped shape the institutional structures of political representation in the form of the electoral system of Indian democracy. It assists in providing an answer to why and how independent India came to adopt its current electoral system characterised by the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system. It also analyses how and why the alternatives to FPTP, primarily any form of proportional representation, were rejected. Moreover, the book simultaneously provides a rich and detailed description of how communities, and religious, caste and ethnic categories came to be defined as their demands for political representation were conceded. It also briefly deals with the issue of delimitation of constituencies during the colonial and the immediate post-independence period.