Steven White Profile picture
Sep 25, 2020 3 tweets 1 min read Read on X
One thing underpinning the Supreme Court's perceived legitimacy is that vast proportions of the electorate simply don't think it's an important or interesting topic. Large numbers of people don't even have opinions about individual justices. That's probably going to change though
You can say the same about District Attorneys and such (thinking of Michael Sances's presentation on this at #CJPoliSci20). I suspect, though, that we're living through an era where people come to understand just how much *political* power these positions hold.
The common theme here is that lots of voters perceive the judicial system, from the local level to the Supreme Court, as primarily being about boring technical things, but are coming to realize that it's also about the biggest issues facing democracy.

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More from @notstevenwhite

Oct 23, 2022
We had unusually beautiful weather this weekend, so naturally I spent all day yesterday and half of today playing my first chess tournament in the basement of a Quality Inn:
In my second game, my opponent played Bg4 on move 6, which was a big blunder (+6.5 for white). Unfortunately I couldn't find the right move over the board (despite spending a lot of time on it) and ended up losing. I'll post the right move later in case anyone wants to guess.
Special shout out to all the adults in my section who got crushed by the small child who had to sit on her knees to be able to see the board. I lucked out and didn't get paired with her.
Read 5 tweets
Aug 7, 2021
I thought I was being clever here by playing Re4 to deflect the queen and set up checkmate, but it's actually +7.7 for white Image
I could see Rf8+, but I thought by playing Ka7 I could escape any trouble there. I missed the possibility of a *rook sacrifice*
If white plays Ra8+ and black responds by taking with the king, queen taking the rook on e4 is a check that forces a queen trade, undermining the checkmate threat and leaving white with a big advantage
Read 4 tweets
May 6, 2021
Republican politicians started strategically calling all accurate historical information about racial inequality "critical race theory" and a lot of media outlets are just uncritically running with the phrase now
Even the Guardian is doing it:
"Critical race theory" is a real thing, of course, but the political strategy here is concept stretching and, well, it appears to be working.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 12, 2021
I've finally completed my APD scholarly transition from "I can't believe I have to read this much about the post office" to "I'm going to make my students read about the post office"
There's a certain set of classic APD books that I honestly found borderline incomprehensible as a new grad student that I now think are much more interesting and it's hard to know exactly how that mental transition happened (or how to make it happen for current grad students).
I suspect everything from the general promise to "deconstruct the administrative state" to the still ongoing effort at undermining the postal service has been, while bad for the world, "good" for APD scholars who work on administration/bureaucracy
Read 4 tweets
Jan 9, 2021
ahhh I thought people were just joking, but the APSA statement really does speak of an "agreement by both sides to do better and work together"
I have no idea who wrote the APSA statement, but thousands of political scientists signed an open letter calling for the president to be removed. It doesn't speak for everyone, to be sure, but I think it speaks for more people than the APSA statement does. docs.google.com/document/d/1iL…
It's fascinating to me that the APSA statement came out 2 days ago and a lot of people, myself included, didn't notice it until now.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 8, 2021
The Up series is possibly the greatest thing I have ever seen and I can't recommend it enough.
I still haven't seen 63 Up because part of me doesn't want to not be able to look forward to watching it.
Read 5 tweets

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