Category: Theory

Constitutional scholar Gary L. McDowell’s on “Understanding what the framers meant it to say,” at it appeared in the Deseret News March 6, 2010:

RICHMOND, Va. €” Twenty-five years ago this past summer, then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III stood before the annual meeting of the American Bar Association and displayed the temerity to call for the nation and its courts to abandon their errant juridical ways and return to what he called “a jurisprudence of original intention.”

Since that moment the advocates of liberal judicial activism have dedicated themselves to discrediting the idea of what has come to be called “originalism,” inevitably portraying it, in the words of one scholar, as an “inadequate and dying methodology.” 

Barack Obama is the most recent antagonist to emerge and take a stand against originalism. Rather than select judges who understand themselves to be bound by the text of the Constitution and the intentions of its framers, the president prefers those willing to keep the Constitution in tune with the times by elevating their own personal sentiments about social justice to the level of constitutional law. The search for “empathy” was to be his standard for his judicial picks his first two years; there is no reason to suspect he will abandon that in the last two years of this term.

Like many of its critics, the president fails to understand that originalism is not simply one method of interpretation among many equals; rather, it is the only one with a moral foundation that derives from the very essence of the American constitutional order. The Lockean philosophy of natural rights upon which the entire constitutional edifice rests demands it. The reason is that arbitrariness in the administration of power €” including what Justice Joseph Story condemned as the “arbitrary discretion of the judges” €” is the greatest threat to the rule of law. Continue reading Obama is the most recent antagonist to take a stand against originalism

Suburban living is the most popular choice for the good life for Americans. But must the strip mall and the eight-lane highway define the quality of 21st-century American life?

That is a central question about the modern metropolis€”with its center city core, suburbs, and exurbs€”that political scientist and leadership scholar Thad Williamson explores.

In his new book “Sprawl, Justice, and Citizenship: The Civic Costs of the American Way of Life,” Williamson takes a data-rich look at the world of soccer moms, gated communities, cul de sacs, big-box stores and gas-gulping commutes.

What makes this book fresh is, first, its use of a landmark 30,000-person survey to examine life in America today, and second, the nuanced portrait that emerges from this study. On the one hand, Williamson shows how sprawling neighborhoods contribute to diminished civic life and increased social inequality.

For instance, suburban residents (controlling for other factors) are less likely to belong to a political organization or to have participated in a protest. On the other hand, suburban dwellers are happier than urbanites with their communities and more likely to trust their neighbors. These varied findings point to the following paradox: Suburban sprawl is damaging to equality, damaging to political engagement, and damaging to the environment yet Americans (by and large) like it anyway. "Finding ways to preserve what is good in America's metropolitan areas while addressing the long-standing inequalities between cities and suburbs that have produced endless sprawl is one of the most pressing and challenging leadership problems of this generation," Williamson says.

Thad Williamson is Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies and Political Science at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, the University of Richmond. His next book is on the politics of Richmond, Va.

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By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

Ironically, the first published psychological analysis of heroism wasn't completed by a psychologist.  In 1949, Joseph Campbell, a comparative mythologist who studied medieval literature and world religions, wrote a remarkable book called The Hero of a Thousand Faces.  The volume became one of the most widely read and influential books of the 20^th century.

While studying hero myths from around the world, Campbell noticed a distinct pattern.  It didn't matter where or when a particular myth was created; the world's hero stories were all strikingly similar to one another.  According to Campbell, in these stories "a hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."  Campbell proposed that this prototypical heroic journey, which he called the hero monomyth, consists of three parts: departure, initiation, and return.

The departure phase involves the set of forces that set the hero's journey in motion.  The hero is thrown from the safety and comfort of the familiar world into a dark, dangerous place.  Often a guide or a sidekick offers assistance.  The initiation stage features a series of tests or challenges that the hero must overcome.  Temptations of the flesh, or a battle with a father figure who must be vanquished, are quite common.  Upon returning, the hero brings a great boon, or benefit, to the world.  Not only is the returned hero forever transformed, so is the society that receives the boon.

In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell discusses the psychological importance of the hero's path.  He argues that the hero's journey is a metaphor for the human experience.  All people undergo painful struggles and must muster the strength and cleverness to overcome adversaries and difficult circumstances.  The struggle defines us because it allows us to realize our full potential via triumphant redemption. "The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive," noted Campbell.  "It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.  Where you stumble, there lies your treasure€¦. Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging."

Campbell suggests that we identify strongly with the hero story because it taps into an important part of our collective unconscious.  First described by psychoanalyst Carl Jung in 1916, the collective unconscious is a storehouse of latent images that have developed through human evolution.  Jung called these latent images archetypes, which can be activated, or made conscious, when something in an individual's experience resembles the image.  Archetypes are based on our collective experience over the course of evolution, rather than individual experience.  Jung wrote, "There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life.  Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution."

The hero archetype, then, can explain the pervasiveness of the hero monomyth found in human societies across time and geography.  Human beings, in effect, may have a biological readiness to encounter heroes and to resonate to hero stories that fit the Campbellian monomythic structure.  George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, admits that he based the characters and plot of Star Wars on the hero monomythic structure he encountered in The Hero With a Thousand Faces.   Disney movies such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King are said to have been influenced by Campbell.  Musical artists such as Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead have all produced work based on Campbell's hero monomyth.

For his enduring impact on the way we think about human experience and the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell is one of our intellectual heroes. Read more in Heroes: What They Do and Why We Need Them.

The Jepson School of Leadership Studies each year is host to many of the world’s top scholars and deepest thinkers on matters related to leadership. Some of these august visitors from the 2009-10 academic year sat down with Jepson faculty members for short interviews about leadership. In addition to these brief interviews, many of these experts also give full lectures or serve on panels. Lectures may also be viewed online.

Conversations on Leadership

• Steven Pinker on Leadership and Democracy
• Irene Khan on Human Rights and Poverty
• James MacGregor Burns on Leadership
• Dambisa Moyo on Keys to Successful Leadership
• Scholars’ Reflections on Haiti 
• Father J. Bryan Hehir on Ethics of War
• Jesse Prinz on Leadership and Morality
• Robert Cialdini on Influence and Leadership
• Patrician M.C. Brown on Leadership and Health Care

Living with Relativism: Can We Find a Common Good in a Morally Diverse World” was the topic of the most recent Jepson Leadership Forum talk by philosopher Jesse Prinz.

Throughout the historical and anthropological record, we find striking examples of moral variation. The evidence suggests that human societies do not revolve around a shared stock of values, but rather vary on almost every imaginable dimension. Such variation has led to insights into the origins of morality, and it has helped researchers in psychology and neuroscience recognize that moral values have a basis in emotion rather than pure reason. Variation also poses a practical challenge. Societies are increasingly pluralistic, and international relations often bring together nations with opposing perspectives. We praise mutual respect, but the very psychological factors that underlie moral variation also tend to promote a degree of moral absolutism, and we see our moral adversaries as deplorably confused. We must find ways to cope with this predicament. Ironically, the search for a common good may begin with the recognition that, in some sense, there is no common good.
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The Jepson School’ of Leadeship Studies’ John Marshall Center for the Study of Statesmanship’s Great Book Conference on Oct. 16-17, 2009 featured “Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power” by Harvey Mansfield. This panel discussion on October 17, 2009, led by Dan Palazzolo, University of Richmond, highlighted “Putting Theory into Practice: Executive Power in Contemporary Politics.” Panelists included William Galston, The Brookings Institution, John Yoo, University of California, Berkeley, Terry Eastland, The Weekly Standard and Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University.

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