Craig R. Smith

Bio: Craig R. Smith is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Public policy & Separation of powers. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 16 citations.

The Supreme Court's Ruling in Bush v. Gore: A Rhetoric of Inconsistency

Abstract: This critique of the Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore establishes judicial and political contexts to ground a critical reading of the text. It finds that a majority on the Court, and some dissenters, violated their previously established realms of legitimate linguistic possibilities to make their arguments. The majority's rhetorical inconsistencies with their past rulings, particularly those immediately preceding Bush v. Gore, prevented consensus and attempted to rationalize a politically charged decision. This study explains how the Court's credibility was damaged.

The Campaign to Repeal the Fairness Doctrine

Abstract: In democratic republics changes in policy occur often; however, with our system of checks and balances, the process can be tedious, time consuming, and multifaceted. With the election of Jimmy Carter, the government began to take a hard look at various regulations to see if they needed reform or repeal.1 By 1979, telephone, rail, truck, bus, and airline regulations had been loosened or terminated. Instrumental in promulgating the Carter administration's agenda were the Commerce Committees of the Senate and the House. Moderate and conservative Democrats teamed with Republicans to push the reforms through Congress. In 1980, Ronald Reagan's landslide produced a Republican majority in the Senate. Senator Robert Packwood (ROregon) became the chairman of the Commerce Committee when the new Senate convened in January of 1981. He brought deregulation to the telecommunications industry. While others on the senator's staff would focus on deregulation of cable and telephone, my charge would be repeal of the content rules that applied to broadcasters.2 Senator Packwood and I established a foundation which would coordinate the repeal effort using non-public funds and which could provide lobbyist, editorialists, and other opinion leaders with needed arguments and evidence. In December of 1982, the Freedom of Expression Foundation was established in Washington, D.C, using contributions from the major networks, AT&T, Washington Post Company, and Times-Mirror Company. As president of the Foundation, I had a clear view of the campaign to repeal the Fairness Doctrine and saw that such efforts are easily caught up in the crosscurrents of ideology and partisan politics. From this perspective, I provide an inside look at public policy reform while revealing the role public address plays in a bureaucratic republic where there are multiple forums for persuasion.

Reconstituting representation: the supreme court and the rhetorical controversy over state and congressional redistricting

Abstract: Reconstituting Representation: The Supreme Court and the Rhetorical Controversy over State and Congressional Redistricting. (December 2008) Jeremiah Peter Hickey, B.S., St. John Fisher College; M.A., SUNY Brockport Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. James Arnt Aune Constitutive rhetoric focuses on the idea that in times of historical crisis, speakers possess the ability to repair the language of the community and reshape the identity of the community. This dissertation relies upon the concept of constitutive rhetoric to examine the Supreme Court’s reapportionment and redistricting decision. By employing constitutive rhetoric, the Supreme Court reacts to the crisis of representation because of malapportionment and redistricting to transform our Constitutional republic to a Constitutional democracy and, further, to debate competing visions of representation and democracy necessary to sustain political life and the democratic experience. Chapter I offers readers a literature review on constitutive rhetoric, a literature review on reapportionment and redistricting, and presents readers with an outline of the dissertation. Chapter II provides a brief history of redistricting in the United States since Colonial times, the development of apportionment and redistricting law at the state court level, and the Supreme Court’s invention of a rhetorical tradition in apportionment and districting law before the Reapportionment Revolution. In the last section of Chapter II, I

Whitewashing Diversity The Conservative Attack on the “Stealth Fairness Doctrine”

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between conservative discourse, racial politics, and broadcasting policy in the United States. It explores how conservative media personalities, pundits, and activists in 2009 claimed that efforts to increase broadcast diversity were, in actuality, attempts by liberals to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine—a policy that had required broadcasters to air both sides of controversial issues—through “the backdoor.” Reframing media diversity policies as masquerades to silence conservative voices, conservatives both denied the existence of barriers to participation for people of color and extended a narrative of conservative victimization. In contextualizing and analyzing the crusade against the “stealth Fairness Doctrine,” this article demonstrates how media policy discourse has operated as a site where conservative claims of injury occlude the continued existence of structural barriers to people of color and deny the importance of racial difference in the United States.

What's the Matter with Kansas and New York City? Definitional Ruptures and the Politics of Sex

Abstract: "Nature loves diversity, society hates it." --Milton Diamond On September 25, 1998, Marshall Gardiner married J'Noel Ball, a professor of finance at Park College whom he had met at a fundraiser for his alma mater. Their relationship was a May-December romance as Marshall was forty-five years J'Noel's senior. According to Marshall's son, the 85-year-old "looked a little like Paul Newman," and he was "an eccentric ladies' man ... who loved beautiful women" (qtd. in Tresniowski, Kilse, and Sieder 75). Despite the difference in their ages, Marshall and J'Noel bridged their generational gap by discussing economics, working on their house together, and traveling. After a few months of courtship and several wedding proposals, J'Noel finally accepted Marshall's proposition. The following day, Kansas Supreme Court Justice Robert Davis, Marshall's close friend, married the couple in a private ceremony (Blackwood). On her wedding day, J'Noel could not have imagined that four years later Justice Davis and his colleagues on the Kansas Supreme Court would legally erase his matrimonial proclamation by unanimously voiding her marriage to Marshall. (1) J'Noel Gardiner's journey to the Supreme Court started on a plane to Baltimore. At the beginning of what would be their last trip together, Marshall suffered a heart attack and died in his wife's arms. Upon landing, J'Noel undertook the difficult task of informing Marshall's estranged son, Joe Gardiner, about his father's death. The call was difficult not only because of the subject matter, but also because J'Noel and Joe had never met each other, having only briefly spoken on the phone a few times. Upon meeting face-to-face for the first time at the funeral home, J'Noel's hesitation to provide her maiden name to the funeral director raised Joe's suspicions about J'Noel's past. Concerned about the division of the estate, Joe immediately hired a private investigator to run a background check on his stepmother (Tresniowski, Kilse, and Sieder 76). As the private investigator searched J'Noel's records, Marshall's family desperately searched for his will to assist them in planning his funeral. After days of searching it became clear Marshall had died without leaving behind a will. Thus, in accordance with Kansas law, Marshall's $2.5 million dollar estate would be divided equally between his wife and his son. Joe objected to this division of the estate given his reservations about his stepmother, and Joe's objections grew stronger after hearing an initial report from his private investigator. Among other things, the private investigator relayed to Joe that J'Noel's Social Security number had been issued to a man while her other official documents from the state of Wisconsin, including her birth certificate and driver's license, had been issued to a woman. Upon receipt of this news, Joe hired lawyers to challenge the division of the estate on the grounds that his father and stepmother's marriage was an illegal same-sex civil marriage. As the case worked its way through the trial and then appellate courts, first Joe and then J'Noel received favorable rulings. The parties asked the courts to determine whether or not, for the purposes of marriage, post-operative transsexuals should be legally recognized as their pre- or post-operative sex. (2) The judges charged with answering the seemingly simple question animating the controversy placed before the courts, "What makes a 'man' a 'man' and a 'woman' a 'woman'?", found no guidance in Kansas statutes. In 1980 the Kansas legislature prohibited the legal recognition of same-sex civil marriages. Sixteen years later, in the wake of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, the Kansas legislature reaffirmed this commitment by barring the recognition of out-of-state same-sex civil marriages. However, neither statute provided any guidance on how to interpret the most basic of terms in the law, namely, how to define sex, man, and woman. …