Generic tendencies in majority and non‐majority supreme court opinions: The case of justice Douglas

Using a sample of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas' Supreme Court opinons as the data base, this study investigated the question of whether majority or non‐majority status constitutes a variable sufficiently strong to predict the rhetorical quality of the opinion. The three traditional schools of legal philosophy, Natural Law, Legal Positivism, and Legal Realism, provided the basis of three hypothetical rhetorical genres which were found to be present in statistically similar frequencies in all opinion types. These findings (1) call into question the conventional wisdom that majority and dissenting opinions represent different rhetorical sub‐species, and (2) suggest that a more fruitful avenue of analysis looks to the generic architechtonics of Supreme Court opinions rather than to the relatively more superficial dimension of stylistics.     

Academic and Student Affairs Issues Post Hurricane Katrina

This article describes several issues in the academic and student affairs areas faced by students and faculty in the post-Katrina destruction environment. Cases are used to illustrate the issues, and a call is made for increased disaster readiness plans.     

Desiring to Fit: Fostering the Success of Community College Transfer Students in STEM

The United States is experiencing a dire need for individuals who possess training and expertise in areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). With over half of the nation’s students entering university environments via community colleges coupled with a large portion of this population majoring in STEM areas, the successful transition and adjustment of community college transfer students is essential to the STEM workforce. This article uses an ex post facto survey research design to examine the socialization factors that impact the transition and adjustment experiences of community college transfer students in STEM disciplines. Two hierarchical regression models are employed to examine the factors that impact the academic and social adjustment of community college transfer students in STEM majors. This research was situated using an adaptation of Weidman’s (1987) Socialization Theoretical Framework. Implications, and recommendations for policy and practice will be provided based on the overall results of this study.     

A Theoretical Model for Preparing Incarcerated Youth for Careers in an Increasingly Technological World: Computational Logic as a Vehicle for Improving Human Decision-making Skills

Most youth in juvenile delinquent systems end up incarcerated due in part to poor decision-making skills. This study describes a theoretical framework undergirding the relationships across delinquency, learning climate, decision-making, and computational logic. This framework will inform a team of educators, criminologists, and psychologists, and their peers in computer science and mathematics, instructional software design, and content experts as they build and test an innovative instructional model for youth in secure care settings. The goal of the system is to improve human decision-making skills, while preparing youth for further education potentially leading to careers in STEM fields.     

Balancing act: Government roles in an energy conservation network

Government-led interorganizational alliance networks present a sensible opportunity to overcome many societal challenges through collaborative governance. In particular, few researchers have studied alliance networks in the field of energy conservation in commercial buildings—a sector with unique barriers to greater diffusion of innovative cost-saving strategies. We applied an analytic inductive case-based method and social network analysis to study one particular alliance network: the United States Commercial Building Energy Alliances representing interests from retail, commercial real estate, and healthcare sectors. This alliance network was initiated by the United States Department of Energy, with assistance from several federally funded research laboratories in the United States, to promote the diffusion of knowledge and ultimately encourage greater deployment of energy efficiency and clean energy strategies in commercial buildings. We draw upon interview data from 28 cases of private, non-profit, and governmental organizations and complete network data from the alliance participants. We honed in on eight focal cases of governmental organizations to provide insight on how the four forms of energy and environmental data, information, and knowledge shared within an alliance network address the challenge of a vastly underutilized energy resource, namely conservation. Further, we identify and discuss the public's four roles—Commissioner, Interpreter, Marketer, and User—in providing balance to the diffusion of both private and public goods in a network.