The Constitution allows the president to “fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” In Justice Takes a Recess, Scott E. Graves and Robert M. Howard address how presidents have used recess appointments over time and whether the independence of judicial recess appointees is compromised. They argue that these appointments can upset the separation of powers envisioned by the Framers, shif...

Know How to Prepare for Common Disasters at Home and Learn Survival Skills to Survive in the Wild on Your OwnWhat is the purpose of a human's life? We'll get to that later.But first - would you know what to do when a wildfire sets ablaze, a flood happens, a hurricane strikes, a tornado hits, or an earthquake occurs...or when there is a world crisis of food shortage and everybody in your household is starving?Or what about if you were in an accident and lost in the m...

Discover the secret system quietly driving your business forward-or holding it back.At first, everything clicks. The product is taking off. The team is humming. Decisions are fast, execution is smooth, and growth feels effortless.Then, slowly, or sometimes all at once, progress stalls. Teams get tangled. Priorities blur. Work that used to flow now feels stuck. You try to fix it: more people, more process, more pressure. But nothing works for long. The harde...

As the number of women in the U.S. Senate grows, so does the number of citizens represented by women senators. At the same time, gender remains a key factor in senators’ communications to constituents as well as in news media portrayals of senators. Focusing on 32 male and female senators during the 2006 congressional election year, Kim L. Fridkin and Patrick J. Kenney examine in detail senators’ official websites, several thousand press releases and local news stories, and surveys of 18,0...

Websters Dictionary traces "sociopathic" usage to 1944, defining it as "characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior, or a psychopathic nature. "Sociopathy" is used in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM). Especially notable and and influential has been Adam Smith. His first book was entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Its first chapter was on "sympathy." The first few lines of its first paragraph are quite different from the modern econom...

In this, the first major treatment of party identification in twenty years, three political scientists assert that identification with political parties still powerfully determines how citizens look at politics and cast their ballots. Challenging prevailing views, they build a case for the continuing theoretical and political significance of partisan identities.The authors maintain that individuals form partisan attachments early in adulthood and that these political identit...

American liberals and conservatives alike take for granted a progressive view of the Constitution that took root in the early twentieth century. Richard Epstein laments this complacency which, he believes, explains America’s current economic malaise and political gridlock. Steering clear of well-worn debates between defenders of originalism and proponents of a living Constitution, Epstein employs close textual reading, historical analysis, and political and economic theory to urge a return...

Even as unemployment rates soared during the Great Depression, FDR’s relief and social security programs faced attacks in Congress and the courts on the legitimacy of federal aid to the growing population of poor. In response, New Dealers pointed to a long tradition—dating back to 1790 and now largely forgotten—of federal aid to victims of disaster. In The Sympathetic State, Michele Landis Dauber recovers this crucial aspect of American history, tracing the roots of the modern Ame...

The U.S. House of Representatives has been frozen at 435 members for almost a century, and in that time the nation’s population has grown by more than 200 percent. With the number of citizens represented by each House member now dramatically larger, is a major consequence of this historical disparity a diminished quality of representation?Brian Frederick uses empirical data to scrutinize whether representation has been undermined by keeping a ceiling on the number of seats availabl...

More than many areas of American politics research, studies of minor party competition and success are often overly driven by normative concerns that do not hold up to empirical scrutiny. This concise book presents a concerted effort to analyze the barriers in election law, such as ballot access restrictions and single member districts with a plurality rule, that prevent third parties from gaining a durable hold in American politics.Rather than trudge through yet another history of...

How partisan balance between the U.S. presidency and Congress is essential to successful governmentWith three independent branches, a legislature divided into two houses, and many diverse constituencies, it is remarkable that the federal government does not collapse in permanent deadlock. Yet, this system of government has functioned for well over two centuries, even through such heated partisan conflicts as the national health-care showdown and Supreme Court nomin...

Pundits have observed that if so many incumbents are returned to Congress to each election by such wide margins, perhaps we should look for ways to increase competitiveness – a centerpiece to the American way of life – through redistricting. Do competitive elections increase voter satisfaction? How does voting for a losing candidate affect voters’ attitudes toward government? The not-so-surprising conclusion is that losing voters are less satisfied with Congress and their Representative, b...