Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: October 4, 2018

Interruptions at Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been rising since the 1980s

The Conversation: “Depending on who you ask, the American people saw very different things in the riveting testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. To some, Kavanaugh’s behavior was the self-indulgent temper tantrum of an angry and entitled man. To others, it was the understandable – even laudable – reaction of a man pushed too far, forced to defend his honor. There are no obvious ways to bridge this perception gap. The meaning of Kavanaugh’s display, it appears, is in the eye of the beholder. To us, as legal scholars, it was a stunning display from a sitting federal judge. We have, for more than a decade, studied Supreme Court confirmation hearings in minute detail, and we have never seen anything like it. Even Clarence Thomas’s striking metaphor in 1991, denouncing his confirmation hearing a “high-tech lynching,” did not openly invoke such raw partisanship or vengeful threats such as Kavanaugh’s “what goes around comes around.” But, as scholars of the confirmation process, we aim to measure what is measurable, in the hope that data can inform our more subjective perceptions of politics. And one measurable feature of Kavanaugh’s testimony is the striking number of times he interrupted the senators to challenge their comments or force his own point. Here, the historical record can shed some light…[h/t Pete Weiss]

Twitterature: Mining Twitter Data

Christian Howard · October 1, 2018 – Mining Twitter Data “Hello again, everybody! I’m back this semester as a DH Prototyping Fellow, and together, Alyssa Collins and I are working on a project titled “Twitterature: Methods and Metadata.” Specifically, we’re hoping to develop a simple way of using Twitter data for literary research. The project… Continue Reading

Membership of the 115th Congress: A Profile

EveryCRSReport.com: Membership of the 115th Congress: A Profile, October 1, 2018 “This report presents a profile of the membership of the 115th Congress (2017-2018) as of October 1, 2018. Statistical information is included on selected characteristics of Members, including data on party affiliation, average age, occupation, education, length of congressional service, religious affiliation, gender, ethnicity,… Continue Reading

District Court Says Members of Congress Have Standing to Sue President for Emoluments Violations

Constitutional Law Prof Blog [h/t Joe Hodnicki]: “Judge Emmet G. Sullivan (D.D.C.) ruled today in Blumenthal v. Trump that members of Congress have standing to sue President Trump for violations of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. At the same time, Judge Sullivan declined to rule on the President’s other three arguments for dismissal–that the plaintiffs lack… Continue Reading

Leadership in the Storm: How Four U.S. Presidents Handled Turmoil

Knowledge@Wharton – Leadership in the Storm: How Four U.S. Presidents Handled Turmoil “When presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin began working five years ago on her newest book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, she didn’t know how apropos it would be to today’s political climate. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author profiled four presidents — Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin… Continue Reading

Climate scientists are struggling to find the right words for very bad news

Washington Post: “A much-awaited report from the U.N.’s top climate science panel will show an enormous gap between where we are and where we need to be to prevent dangerous levels of warming…The IPCC [United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], the world’s definitive scientific body when it comes to climate change, was awarded the… Continue Reading

Average time to resolve problems three times higher than customers want

This article is of interest for several reasons – human mediated resolution, customer service and research are increasingly targeted to be replaced by various forms of electronic, robotic and AI applications. So the premise of this article, via ZDNet – A recent AI customer experience study shows that, although businesses have invested in AI solutions,… Continue Reading