The 2005 FontFont Calendar

Via Typographica, the 2005 Calendar from FontFont is available for download.

I'm partial to March's Cartonnage. I guess I've taken a liking to well-crafted distressed typefaces. But I also like January's Bau, April's Zwo, and August's Absara. And for a limited time, Absara Light is available for free download!

February's Flava has it's charm, and the slightly tilted axis of July's Lancé sets it apart from other condensed sans-serifs. June's Fago is impressive in a functional way; the superimposed outlines of the various weights give a sense of the typeface's range and discipline. September's Unit, likewise, is very professional, and the illustration of the First Spiekermann Dictum is just plain funny. QED indeed! And check out the Spiekerblog.

Don Quixote at 400

This year is the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, the foremost literary work in the Spanish language. The Spanish daily El País has a page dedicated to the new edition of the work, published by Alfaguara. It's worth a visit. (In Spanish)

Este año marca el cuarto centenario de la publicación de Don Quijote, la obra más importante de la literatura española. El diario El País ha dedicado un sitio de internet a la nueva edición, publicada por Alfaguara. Vale la pena la visita.

A seasonal moment

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Will Wilkinson, an article by Reason's Julian Sanchez that captures the spirit of the season:

It's a Christmas tradition as venerable as mistletoe and caroling: As the days grow shorter, conservative activists claiming to speak for American Christendom raise their voices, not for a rousing round of "Good King Wenceslaus," but to complain that the roughly 75 to 80 percent of Americans who profess allegiance to some denomination or another of Christianity constitute a cruelly oppressed minority.

The kvetching is especially loud this year, with a spate of stories chronicling the outrage over a particularly insidious form of anti-Christian bigotry: the Satanic phrase "happy holidays."

Pour yourself some eggnog, spike it with Manischewitz, and read the whole thing.

Universal university?

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Light blogging today, and probably no blogging until the academic year starts again.

But a post from Matthew Yglesias on college education deserves attention. I'll bracket the discussion of unskilled labor and intergenerational justice (which isn't getting far in MY's comments section). I'll point you instead to the argument for universal college education.

Some of the commenters have made the excellent point that universal college education (unlike, say, universal literacy) is neither necessary nor desirable. The reason is thoroughly pluralistic: not everyone wants to learn the same things, or devote themselves to the kind of work for which college should ideally prepare one. A society should have different options available for people who want to choose different careers, and this society doesn't seem to be doing a good job providing opportunities to make a decent living as a skilled laborer.

I'm slowly coming to the opinion that the problem may have to do with the state's near-monopoly in public education. I would argue that a state controlled by professionals of various stripes is not politically or ideologically equipped to offer various educational alternatives, or at least to present them as equally deserving of merit. As it stands, the professional track is clearly regarded as superior, and the "best" students are those who perform better at the skills required for university education.

Can an attempt be made to offer alternatives, which would require some type of tracking? But the ones making the decision to "diversify" education are not themselves diverse; the vast majority of politicians and policy-makers themselves chose the professional career track. Wouldn't the children who are turned away from the professional career path be rightly suspicious of their motives?

Still more on the election

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

With all due respect to the newspaper of record, the New York Times editorial gets afew facts wrong about the Puerto Rican electoral system. The editors write:

This time the focus has been not on chads, but on an extra mark on each disputed ballot, which Mr. Rosselló says calls into question the intent of the voters. Each of those voters marked the symbol of the small Independence Party and also placed an X beside the name of Mr. Acevedo-Vilá. This may seem a reasonable claim of overvoting - outside Puerto Rico.

Actually, Puerto Rican voting rules are fairly clear on acceptable voting practices. At the polls, Puerto Ricans receive three paper ballots: one for Commonwealth-wide candidates (governor and resident commissioner), one for legislative candidates (some of which are single-district and some who are party lists), and one for municipal candidates (mayor and municipal council).

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There are three ways to vote on each ballot:

1. "integral" vote, whereby the voter makes a single mark immediately below a party's emblem, which has the effect of voting for the straight party ticket;


2. "mixed" vote, whereby the voter makes a mark immediately below a party's emblem, and one or more marks besides the name of another candidate, which has the effect of voting for the party's ticket except for the positions in which the voter crossed party lines; and


3. "by candidacy" vote, whereby the voter makes no mark below a party's emblem, and one or more marks besides the names of one or various candidates.

The only ballots in controversy were the Commonwealth-wide ballots. By making a mark under the pro-Independence (PIP) party's ticket and one each besides the names of the pro-Commonwealth (PPD) party's candidates for governor (Acevedo Vilá) and resident commissioner (Roberto Pratts), some voters cast a mixed vote for the PIP party and for the PPD candidates. The problem is that, since those were the only two candidates on that ballot, these voters, in effect, did not vote for any PIP candidates. The mark under the PIP insignia was merely symbolic, but the intention of the voter was clear. Under Puerto Rican law, which doesn't restrict how many times one may cross party lines in a mixed vote, this was a valid ballot, which is what the Puerto Rico Supreme Court decided last month.

It is also, I should note, a fairly common way of voting in all three ballots, especially when a given candidate is especially well-loved (as many mayors are) or hated (as was former governor Pedro Rosselló). It would have been different if the voters had made a mark besides the gubernatorial candidates of both the PIP and the PPD; that would have been an "by candidacy" overvote. But here, again, the vote was valid, and forseen by the electoral rules.

The Times follows with an explanation of why Puerto Ricans voted this way.

On the island, party pedigree is especially serious business, often spanning generations. It is rare that a voter does not fall solidly into one of three parties based on the island's status: pro-commonwealth (the status quo), pro-statehood or pro-independence.

This is just wrong. The pro-statehood party (PNP) was created just over thirty years ago, when the pro-Commonwealth PPD had a supermajority in the legislature and no prospects of ever losing power. Since then, the PNP has grown to match the PPD's strength. Thirty years of linear change in party loyalty hardly qualifies as "party pedigree... often spanning generations". And even in the last legislative term, several lawmakers with actual party pedigrees switched tems. One was the son of a legendary senator from the PPD, who was frustrated by the PPD's opposition to the US Navy in Vieques, and jumped ship (pun intended) to the PNP. The other is a senator with several decades in the legislature, who started as a PIP stalwart, jumped to the PPD, later to the PNP, and is now back in the PPD.

Both of my parents have been active in a party different from their parents'. And many independentists consistently vote for the PPD candidates to stave off a pro-Statehood victory. They even have a name—melones, which means "watermelons", because they're green (the PIP color) on the outside and red (the PPD color) in the inside.

Finally, the poorest Puerto Ricans are often so dependent on state aid that they vote for whoever makes the most credible promise to deliver it. This is what has spawned the growth of the pro-Statehood movement, which has played on fears that American aid will dry out under independence, and that the Commonwealth is too unstable to secure it.

Mr. Acevedo-Vilá made special appeals to members of the Independence Party, the island's swing voters, to vote for him and against Mr. Rosselló, whose two terms are remembered for a rash of corruption-related indictments against some of his aides and associates. Marking a party symbol on the ballot is an act of loyalty. Marking a specific candidate indicates the clear choice of that voter. Such split ballots have not been legally challenged in the past.

Again, marking a party symbol on the ballot is a vote for the ticket. A mixed ballot is a vote for the ticket, with exceptions. But it is true that such ballots have never been challenged in the past. Then again, they've never been much in play, because there's never before been so close an election.

Only in this case, when the mixed vote was for all candidates of another party, can the party vote truly be said to be an act of loyalty. Not that it did much good for the PIP, which lost its franchise by falling under the 3% threshold, and must now register anew.

More coverage of Puerto Rico election

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

The New York Times praises the First Circuit decision in an editorial, as does an Op-Ed columnist at the Boston Globe. Reuters has an article on the subject, and so do the AP (in USAToday), and the Miami Herald.

The Puerto Rico election cases

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

I'm knee deep in self-contemplation as I prepare an unusually introspective fellowship application, so my blogging has been shamefully light this week. Magnanimous soul that I am, I'll leave you with a bit of reading material for the holiday season.

As some people have noticed, Puerto Rico has been without a governor since the November election. The circumstances that preceded and followed this event make for lively discussion about colonialism, federalism, electoral systems, and political culture. What is the relationship between Federal and local courts in a colonial context? Whither the legitimacy of the Federal courts, which was supposed to rest on their being removed from "local interest," when Federal judges in Puerto Rico are notoriously given over to one party (pro-Statehood)—and many of the local judges are given over to the other (pro-Commonwealth)?

The island is mired in so much acrimony that riots have broken out in front of the Federal courthouse. The pro-Commonwealth candidate beat the pro-Statehood candidate by less than half of one percent, but the legislature is in pro-Statehood hands by a two-to-one margin. Party adherence borders on the fanatical, and even mildly dissenting legislators are kicked out of their caucus or stripped of all benefits. But the actual proportion of the electorate is about 48/48. Under these conditions, why does Puerto Rico insist on a first-past-the-post, instead of a proportional system?

And on an island that has under four million people living in thirty-five hundred square miles, why is there a bicameral legislature, instead of a single chamber?

In any case, the United States Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit has just issued an opinion in what it has itself dubbed the "Puerto Rico election cases". I've had them explained to me, but I still haven't read them. When I do, I'll post a summary, but feel free to share your thoughts in the meantime. leave your thoughts over at Political Arguments.

¡Y no se pongan politiqueros, que éste es un weblog serio!

Caribbean Philosophical Association

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Neil Roberts, a fellow political theory student at the University of Chicago, sends me the following call for papers for the Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Philosophical Association.

The conference will take place in San Juan, Puerto Rico—my hometown—and counts many important political theorists among the speakers and participants. I encourage all to send in your submissions.

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Call for Papers
Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA) Annual Meeting
SHIFTING THE GEOGRAPHY OF REASON II:
GENDER, RELIGION, AND SCIENCE

June 1 – 4, 2005
University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus and in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

Plenary speakers include:

Linda Martín Alcoff, Syracuse University
Enrique Dussel, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Sylvester James Gates, Jr., University of Maryland

Other participants include:

Alejandro De Oto, Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia- Argentina
Marina Banchetti-Rabino, Florida Atlantic University
Tunde Bewaji, University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica
B. Anthony Bogues, Brown University
Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University
David Fryer, Illinois-Wesleyan University
Gertrude James Gonzalez de Allen, Spelman College
Patrick Goodin, Howard University
Lewis R. Gordon, Temple University and UWI
Jane Anna Gordon, University of Pennsylvania
Clevis Headley, Florida Atlantic University
Stephen Haymes, De Paul University
Paget Henry, Brown University
Clarence Sholé Johnson, Middle Tennessee State University
Joyce Joyce, Temple University
Aaron Kamugisha, York University
Kenneth Knies, SUNY-Stony Brook
Teodros Kiros, Brown University
Edizon Léon, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador
Lisa Lowe, University of California at San Diego
Nelson Maldonado Torres, University of California at Berkeley
Brinda Mehta, Mills College
Brian Meeks, University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica
Michael Monahan, Marquette University
Natalija Mièunoviè, Serbia
Walter Mignolo Duke University
Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, Lewis University
Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania
Neil Roberts, University of Chicago
Eddie Souffrant, University of North Carolina
Eric Tucker, Oxford University
Catherine Walsh, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador
Kristin Waters, Worcester State University

Send title and abstract of paper and short biographical statements by 1
February 2004 to:

Lewis R. Gordon, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy
Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought, Anderson Hall (022-28),
114 West Berks Street
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122-6090
(215) 204-5621 / Fax: (215) 204-2535
E-mail: ISRST@temple.edu

How to design newspaper ads

Academics, as a rule, don't think much—or well—of advertising. The Idea should stand out on its own; there is something cheap and tawdry about shameless self-promotion. But content matters little if no one is aware of it. No one will apply to a program they don't know about. No one will go to a conference they don't see announced.

That is why even academics advertise... often with graceless results. Which makes this dandy guide on how to design newspaper ads especially welcome. It is from the website of the European Office for Newspaper Design.

Love it, learn it, live it. And let people know about it!

Positively marriageable

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via SCOTUSBlog (and the Globe and Mail, and the Guardian, and the New York Times), the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled unanimously that the federal Canadian government can go ahead with its plan to make marriage available to same-sex couples.

The questions presented to the Court were:

1. whether "the annexed Proposal for an Act respecting certain aspects of legal capacity for marriage for civil purposes [is] within the exclusive legislative authority of the Parliament of Canada";


2. whether "the proposal, which extends capacity to marry to persons of the same sex, [is] consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms";


3. whether "the freedom of religion guaranteed by paragraph 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protect[s] religious officials from being compelled to perform a marriage between two persons of the same sex that is contrary to their religious beliefs"; and


4. whether "the opposite-sex requirement for marriage for civil purposes, as established by the common law and set out for Quebec in section 5 of the Federal Law-Civil Law Harmonization Act, No. 1, [is] consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms"

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In essence, the Court answered the first question partly in the affirmative (with regards to the power of Parliament to extend the definition of marriage to same sex couples), and partly in the negative (with regards to its authority to prescribe rules for the solemnization of marriage, a power reserved to the Provinces). The second and third questions were answered in the affirmative as well. The fourth the Court declined to answer.

The most interesting line of the opinion concerns the meaning of sec. 91(26) of the Constitution Act of 1867, which gives "exclusive Legislative Authority of the Parliament of Canada" on a number of matters, including "marriage and divorce". The question before the Court was whether the concept of marriage itself could be redefined as part of the power of Parliament. The Court explained that it could.

Section 91(26) did not entrench the common law definition of "marriage" as it stood in 1867. The "frozen concepts" reasoning runs contrary to one of the most fundamental principles of Canadian constitutional interpretation: that our Constitution is a living tree which, by way of progressive interpretation, accommodates and addresses the realities of modern life.

With this statement, the Court embraced at once legal positivism and a wide latitude for the interpretation of legal concepts. This is a sound legal theory. In essence, the law means just what it says, no more and no less. If "marriage" is specified, no qualification—whether historical, philological, or philosophical—should be attached to the concept. After all, a legislature is always free to to be as specific as it wants when it drafts a law. Sometimes no qualification is necessary because alternative interpretations are not even contemplated (as I'm sure that gay marriage was not in the realm of possibility in 1867). But if the meaning of a word changes—as words are wont to do—a legislature is free to ammend the law to compensate for the change. If it doesn't, it acquiesces to the broadening (or narrowing) of meaning.

One worries that legal interpretation becomes simply a matter of semantics. But this is not necessarilly bad, or absent from current juridical practice. The law is notoriously conservative in its use of language, and words-of-art crowd out common usage in many legal subjects. Besides, unless one subscribes to the most debauched tenets of post-structuralism, the interpretive horizon is not limitless. Evidence—be it from legal history, linguistics or moral reasoning—may be brought to bear on the interpretation of a term, clause, or sentence.

Still, it is refreshing to see legal positivism put to good use. When placed in the hands of capable and ingenious jurists, it holds far more progressive promise than it gets credit for.

Supreme obsession

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via SCOTUSBlog, an unhealthy obsession with the Supreme Court. I don't see what's so funny about it. Don't all children ask their parents for en banc reconsideration of their habeas petition when they're grounded?

Oy...ez!

On liberals and fellow-travelers

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Erik's post and the ensuing discussion prompted me to re-examine the merits of political typologies. The matter of classifying political ideologies is just as difficult as classifying species in biology. It may be broadly construed as an option between cladistics and functionalism.

The cladistic approach has its merits: a bird and a bat both fly, but they are (evolutionarily) not closely related. American liberals and libertarians share a more-or-less common tradition, which is different from that of the member parties of the Socialist International. In that sense, the relevant social-democratic party in Britain is Labor, not the LibDems. The LibDems did emerge from the merger of the Liberal and the Social Democratic parties, but the liberal faction has clearly come to dominate, as evinced the LibDems membership in the ALDE (formerly ELDR) and the Liberal International. The US Democrats, I might add, are not themselves part of the Liberal International, but the National Democratic Institute has observer status in the LI.

more...A common tradition leaves an imprint on philosophy and policy, and gives the members of the tradition a common language. But too strict an adherence to cladistics risks the proverbial failure to see the forest for the trees. History and expediency affect political tendencies in many ways.

I don't know whether, in the case of US liberalism, the absence of a viable socialist alternative led people with social-democratic sympathies to the Democratic party, which in turn affected that party's ideology, or whether it was the attempt to co-opt or suppress socialism that led to an engagement with socialist critiques of liberalism.

In Rawls's case, I think the second option is correct. But Rawls provides a more pragmatic justification of the convergence of social-democrats and left-liberals, and makes it into a philosophical position: the idea of an overlapping consensus. It does not matter much whether one supports civil liberties from a commitment to (liberal) individualism or (social-democratic) humanism, or if one advocates for the difference principle from (liberal) concern for equality of opportunity or (social-democratic) solidarity. The shared commitment to political-liberal institutions is an independent "module" that does not require a shared avowal to the philosophical justification of those institutions all the way down to first principles. (A bird and a bat are not closely related, but they both fly, and that ought to count for something.)

Overlapping consensus is something like the liberal equivalent of the communist "fellow traveler", but without the secret desire to shoot the lukewarm ally when the revolution finally triumphs. It omits certain important rhetorical aspects of political discourse, but captures the way in which political alliances (besides unholy alliances of the Red-Brown kind) actually work.

Academe All-Stars!

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Crooked Timber (again), a lineup that blows any other group blog out of the water: Left2Right. The name is silly in its alphanumeric hipness, but the scholars are serious. Their mission is to understand how the Left can communicate effectively, and get itself taken seriously by the Right.

In the aftermath of the 2004 Presidential election, many of us have come to believe that the Left must learn how to speak more effectively to ears attuned to the Right. How can we better express our values? Can we learn from conservative critiques of those values? Are there conservative values that we should be more forthright about sharing? "Left2Right" will be a discussion of these and related questions.

Although we have chosen the subtitle "How can the Left get through to the Right?", our view is that the way to get through to people is to listen to them and be willing to learn from them. Many of us identify ourselves with the Left, but others are moderates or independents. What we share is an interest in exploring how American political discourse can get beyond the usual talking points.

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I commend the authors' premise, all the while doubting its prospect of success. I have of late confirmed a lingering suspicion that building bridges is not as wise as raising good, solid fences. Hey, common ground is good if you can get it, but I want to know that there's a place where they can't get to me.

Does that make me a bad liberal? A bad Rawlsian? I don't think so. At least I still need to justify the drawing of the property line. And this, I feel, is where "the Left must learn how to speak more effectively to ears attuned to the Right". Federalism, local government, property rights, these can all be bulwarks against the advancing (red) tide.

Of course, liberal rhetoric must be changed to fit these righteous times, not only to acommodate conservatives, but to challenge them. I agree wholehearledly with Elizabeth Anderson.

How can the Left get through to the Right on matters of principle? First, by recalling the inspiring principles of human dignity, equality, and democracy that underwrite liberalism's greatest achievements.
[...]
How can the Left get through to the Right in the face of its mass mobilization of individual and group antipathies? By standing up for ourselves, proudly defending our positions, ideals, and identities, and exposing the Right's tactics for what they are: ugly, nasty, small-minded bigotry.

But in the ensuing call for deliberative democracy, I am again wary (and weary). Why do we feel this masochistic need to deliberate—all of us together—about everything? We can't all get along; we've settle that. Can't we let ourselves be instead?

The Becker-Posner Blog

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

Via Crooked Timber, the Becker-Posner Blog. Judging by the authors' prolific precedent in publication, it should prove a rich source of commentary. Welcome!

Journalistic privilege

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Eugene Volokh, of the eponymous conspiracy, has an Op-ed in today's New York Times on journalistic privilege. He extends the definition of journalist to bloggers in general, with which I still have problems—perhaps because my father is a former journalist, or because I to old-time professions.

But that's not the punch of Volokh's piece. Rather, he proposes a broad, but limited form of journalistic privilege modeled after spousal and attorney-client privilege.

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What's the answer? On the one hand, tips from confidential sources often help journalists (print or electronic) uncover crime and misconduct. If journalists had to reveal such sources, many of these sources would stop talking. On the other hand, some tips are rightly made illegal.

The best solution may be to borrow a principle from other privileges, like those for confidential communications to lawyers, psychotherapists and spouses. The law has generally recognized that protecting the confidentiality of such communications is more important than forcing a person's testimony.

But it has also limited the privilege. Communications that facilitate crime or fraud, for example, are not protected. I may confess my crimes to a lawyer, but if I try to hire him to help me commit my crime, he may be obligated to testify against me.

Maybe a journalist's privilege should likewise be limited. Lawmakers could pass legislation that protects leakers who lawfully reveal information, like those who blow the whistle on governmental or corporate misconduct. But if a leaker tries to use a journalist as part of an illegal act—for example, by disclosing a tax return or the name of a C.I.A. agent so that it can be published—then the journalist may be ordered to testify.

I've been in favor of the formal recognition of journalistic privilege for a long time and, on this sort of thing, I'm usually an absolutist. But Volokh's proposal seems eminently sensible. Privilege exists because legislators seek to protect a particular kind of relationship—between spouses, say, clergy and parishioners, or attorneys and doctors and their clients—because of its perceived social importance. A robust and zealous press is necessary in a liberal democracy, but a press that serves as subterfuge for illegal activity is no more laudable than a consigliere.

Go read the whole thing!

Give me that old time religion

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Josh Marshall, the United Church of Christ is running a refreshing campaign for inclusion and tolerance, the kind of stuff that could give liberals a strong religious wing... but CBS is refusing to run it on the grounds that it is "too controversial".

So screw CBS; go see the ads yourselves.

And somebody please send me some data on UCC demographics! I know, as churches go, that Unitarian-Universalists are the most overwhelmingly urban, rich, and overeducated. I would presume that the UCC is not too far behind. Is there good demographic data on churches out there?