Writing Center

News

Orienting in Roxane Gay’s Memoir Hunger

BY Writing Center

To tell you the story of my body, do I tell you how much I weighed at my heaviest? Do I tell you that number, the shameful truth of it always strangling me? At my heaviest, I weighed 577lb, or over 41st, at 6ft 3in. That is a staggering number, but at one point, that was the truth of my body. […] I began eating to change my body. I was willful in this. Some boys had destroyed me, and I barely survived it. I ate because I thought that if my body became repulsive, I could keep men away. Of all the things I wish I knew then that I know now, I wish I had known I could talk to my parents and get help, and turn to something other than food.

Today, I am a fat woman. I don’t think I am ugly. I don’t hate myself in the way society would have me hate myself, but I hate how the world all too often responds to this body. It would be easy to pretend I am just fine with my body as it is. I’m a feminist and I know that it is important to resist unreasonable standards for how my body should look. […]

My body is a cage of my own making. I have been trying to figure a way out of it for more than 20 years.

Roxane Gay’s 2017 autobiography Hunger is appropriately subtitled A Memoir of (My) Body. Gay’s body, which, by her own description, is morbidly obese, is a memoir in itself: a record of the trauma she experienced when she was gang-raped at the age of twelve. After the assault, Gay deliberately ate in an attempt to make herself “repulsive” to men, turning her body into a protective fortress.

In this short excerpt from her introduction, Gay both orients the reader to what appears to be the defining theme of her memoir – her weight – and makes clear that her motive is not what it appears to be. Her obesity will not be the focus of this book. Although much of the memoir is concerned with the effects on Gay’s weight on her life – strangers taking food out of her shopping cart; the humiliation and discomfort of struggling to fit into airplane seats; a boyfriend encouraging her later development of bulimia nervosa because she is at least “working on her problem” – her weight is always secondary. It is a result of one trauma and the cause of another.

Gay makes this distinction in the first pages of her memoir. By posing what appears to be a rhetorical question (“Do I tell you that number?”) but then defiantly answering it (“that was the truth of my body”), she subverts the reader’s expectations. Although the truth of her highest weight may be “shameful” to her, she refuses to hide it, simply because the number itself is not central to her story. Gay initially seems to make her weight the focus of her introduction, but by sharing, not withholding, this “shameful,” “strangling,” “staggering” information, she strips it of its importance. Most memoirs like hers present a glamorous image of “overcoming” obesity; as Gay demonstrates in this introduction, this is not her motive. Her weight itself has never been the problem.

— Rosamond van Wingerden ’20

Source: Adapted excerpt from Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, by Roxane Gay (Harper: 2017)

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Orientation and Motive in “The Aptness of Anger”

BY Writing Center

In one of my courses this semester, “Philosophy and Psychopathology,” we spent some time trying to understand anger. The concept, we learned, has been the subject of philosophical debate for a long time, but the importance of anger is only starting to be understood as it pertains to particular avenues of expressing emotions. One optional reading was Amia Srinivasan’s article, “The Aptness of Anger,” which discusses anger in the context of political philosophy.

Srinivasan begins her article with a historical incident that illustrates two sides of a debate about politics and anger: In 1964, James Baldwin argued that “the American dream has been achieved at the expense of the American Negro,” and William F. Buckley responded with a “pragmatic challenge”: “What in fact shall we do about it?” Buckley’s argument, Srinivasan explains, is part of a long tradition that finds anger wrong because it is counterproductive. Beginning with the Stoics and moving up through history to modern philosophers, she gives a historical overview of the “counterproductivity critique.” Then, in contrast, she cites the opposing view in political philosophy, the one Baldwin demonstrates with the quoted argument: Anger actually is productive as an aid to clarifying a problem and as an impetus to social change. This view, she writes, is often held in Black and feminist thought.

At the end of her first section, Srinivasan steps back from the established debate she has presented and writes that the debate “tends to obscure something specific about anger.” She wants to take the question of anger in another direction. She does not want to consider anger from the perspective of whether it is effective in bringing about change or in achieving goals, which has been long-debated. She wants to ask the philosophical question about the emotion or reaction itself: is it ever, even if not effective, apt in a normative sense?

Srinivasan is successful at orienting the reader into the scholarly conversation that considers anger, and she uses that orientation directly to motivate her own argument, claiming that both sides miss an important point in the conversation. She does this orienting and motivating in an engaging way, with her example right at the beginning and several others as she explicates the standing positions. That overlap between the orientation and the motive is ideal in writing: the two should always be directly linked and lead logically from one to the other.

“[T]his debate between critics and defenders of anger’s productivity tends to obscure something significant about anger. There is more to anger, normatively speaking, than its effects. For any instance of counterproductive anger we might still ask: is it the fitting response to the way the world is? Is the anger, however unproductive, nonetheless apt?”

–Tess Solomon ’21

Srinivasan, Amia. “The Aptness of Anger.” The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2018.

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Argument-making in President Macron’s Speech, 1/13/19

BY Writing Center

In response to the ongoing gilets jaunes protests in France, French President Emmanuel Macron addressed an open letter to the French people on January 13th, 2019. Macron’s letter is not only an indication of the severity of the situation but also exemplifies persuasive and effective writing.

Macron writes:

Dear Françaises, dear Français, my dear compatriots,

In a period of questionings and of uncertainties like the one we are experiencing, we must remember who we are.

France is not a country like others.

The sense of injustice is keener than elsewhere. The insistence on mutual aid and solidarity is stronger.

Chez nous, those who work finance retirement pensions. Chez nous, a large number of citizens pays a tax on their income, sometimes a heavy one, which reduces inequality. Chez nous, education, healthcare, security, justice are accessible to all independently of situation and fortune. The hazards of life, like unemployment, can be overcome, thanks to an effort shared by all.

This is why France is, of all the nations, one of the most fraternal and most equal. […]

In this opening passage, Macron alludes to the situation (“a period of questionings and uncertainties”), but before addressing the issue, he attempts to win over his audience and to define what could be called key terms. “France” itself is the most important definition Macron offers. By defining his country at the outset—and in his own terms—Macron creates an image that he will urge his addressees to live up to in the rest of the letter.

Macron’s stylistic choices add to the effectiveness of his writing. The repetition of “chez nous,” here meaning “in France” but often meaning simply “at home,” “at our house,” emphasizes the unity he tries to affirm still exists in France. The mention of brotherhood and equality hearkens back to the ideals of the French Revolution, an attempt to inspire national pride and recall previous political progress.

Macron continues later in the letter:

I know, certainly, that some among us today are unsatisfied or angry. Because, for them, taxes have been raised too much, public services are too distant, because salaries are too low for some to live with dignity on the fruit of their labor, because our country does not offer the same chances to succeed depending on the place or the family one is from. All would like a more prosperous county and a more just society.

This impatience—I share it. […] For me, there are no forbidden questions. We will not agree on everything; that is normal, that is democracy. But let us at least show that we are a people unafraid of speaking, of exchanging, of debating. And maybe we will discover that we can find agreement, by a majority, beyond our preferences, more often than we believe.

Now acknowledging the grievances of the protesters, reaching the motive of the text, Macron is careful to use the first-person plural throughout, referring to “some among us” and “we” to avoid alienating any readers. In his sudden transition to the singular (“I share it”), following “all” in the previous sentence, he places himself among the people before drawing all addressees together in the plural “let us show.” Framing the issue as one of fear or bravery (“unafraid of speaking”) and especially as one of national honor in the eyes of other countries (“let us show”), Macron appeals not only to the reason but also to the personal and national pride of the addressees.

Macron goes on to outline several policy issues on which he requests citizens’ opinions and participation in debate and to reiterate the importance of dialogue and mutual respect. He concludes with a recapitulation of his argument, a renewed appeal to national feeling, and finally an expression of vulnerability as he expresses hope for the future.

This is how I intend, with you, to transform anger into solutions. […] Françaises, Français, I hope that many of you will be able to participate in this great debate to do useful work for the future of our country.

In trust,

Emmanuel Macron

— Rosamond van Wingerden ’20

Source:

“Quatre grands themes et une trentaine de questions: la letter d’Emmanuel Macron aux Français,” https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2019/01/13/document-la-lettre-d-emmanuel-macron-aux-francais_5408564_823448.html

(my translation)

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Structure in Creative Non-fiction…and Beyond

BY Writing Center

As a sophomore at Princeton I took a seminar called “Creative Non-fiction” with Pulitzer prize-winning professor John McPhee. His advice still resonates for me in my writing, whatever the genre. One point that particularly stands out in my memory is McPhee’s emphasis on structure. Structure was the subject of our first seminar, and for every piece that we wrote, we had to include some kind of structural outline—a tidy Roman numeral list, or perhaps a more abstract doodle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about structure in creative non-fiction lately. My thesis examines the legacy of the picaresque in the non-fiction of Mark Twain, who, at least by his own declaration, despised formal structure. There’s a persistent myth that he wrote as if in a dream-like state with no plan and scarcely any revision. Really, he was much less graceful and far more capricious in his writing and revising. At one point, he even wanted to toss the incomplete manuscript of his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, into the furnace because he couldn’t get the structure of the plot right.

My own research delves into the first work that won him national acclaim, Innocents Abroad, which details Twain’s real-life trip to Europe and the Middle East—in short, a work of creative non-fiction. I find myself in the situation of a detective as I attempt to retroactively piece together the structure of the whole. In one way, the structure is deceptively simple because it is strictly chronological. And yet, in another way, it is much more complex. Time compacts when Twain writes about places that hold scanty interest for him, and he often departs from the chronological structure to draw from memories or histories in the recent and distant past. To make the task of determining structure easier for myself, I’ve started to map out some of the most complicated chapters. As a sample, let me give one passage as an example. In Chapter 26, when Twain is in Rome, he expresses his exasperation at the oldness of it all:

What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere…What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me? What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others? What can I discover? – Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. (169-170)

The chapter begins in this bitter tone but finds release in an elaborate game of make-believe. Twain imagines if he were a scientist or inventor or explorer discovering new things—if he were the first European to sail to the Americas, for instance, or even if he were a Roman in his own era traveling for the first time to America. Then, as if feeling guilty for developing these counterfactual digressions in such detail, he returns to his duty, duly reporting on St. Peter’s Basilica and the Coliseum (though he slips in many a snide remark along the way). He can’t seem to stay reigned in for long, because he soon lapses into another counterfactual, claiming that he has found a bill of advertisement and newspaper from ancient times in the Coliseum. The chapter as a whole, in only twelve pages, develops a multi-layered structure. We have the immediacy of Twain taking stock of what he encounters as a traveler in Rome, but we also have several counterfactual digressions, “quoted” at length: the imaginative accounts of 1) a Roman traveler to the U.S. in the present day 2) an ancient advertisement for the gladiator battles at the Roman coliseum, and 3) an issue of the Roman Daily Battle-Axe with an article on the opening season of the coliseum.

If I had to outline the structure of this chapter, what would it look like? To be sure, there is no single possibility. I’ve found that, much like outlining and reverse outlining in my own writing, the structure might take time to materialize, and often times the process is just as beneficial as the final product. In terms of this chapter of Twain’s, after a few tries, I arrived at this outline:

It’s a kind of narrative ecosystem. The soil of snarky questions fosters the development of deep counterfactual roots, which in turn supply the necessary materials for the more conventional travelogue observations in the present. Far from being unnecessary (though entertaining) digressions, as I initially supposed, those counterfactuals comprise the foundation beneath the present observations.

If you’re stuck wondering at the rationale behind an author’s argument, you might try reverse-engineering the structure. This tactic works beautifully for creative non-fiction or, really, any type of writing. Whatever the genre, structure undergirds it. The crucial thing to remember about structure, McPhee taught me, is that it shouldn’t be cutesy and clever just for show. The structure has to really work for the material. Indeed, the ideal structure arises directly from the material.

— Myrial Holbrook ’19

Quotations from Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain are drawn from the Wordsworth Classics edition published in 2010.

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Writing About Music

BY Writing Center

On recent Tortoise Tuesdays, Isabella, Ellie, and Paige have all analyzed music or musical theater in terms of the writing lexicon. Writing about music is, of course, a discipline in its own right – and often one that requires special attention to orienting, key terms, and other lexicon items to ensure that the writing is clear to readers who may not have extensive prior knowledge. Zachary Woolfe’s recent New York Times article on the opera singer Anita Rachvelishvili masterfully combines technical insights with explanations and examples, demonstrating how good writing can make any topic accessible to a non-expert audience.

Woolfe starts with a specific example: a recent rehearsal of the opera Adriana Lecouvreur. He gives the background information necessary for any reader to make sense of his description and then transitions smoothly to the real focus of the article: Rachvelishvili herself.

“Late in the third act of “Adriana Lecouvreur,” Francesco Cilea’s irresistible potboiler of an opera, the vicious Princesse de Bouillon and Adriana, an actress, square off at a party, rivals for the love of the dashing Maurizio.

In the tumult, Maurizio makes a move toward Adriana, but the princess stops him. “Restate,” she commands, ordering him to stay by her.

On a recent morning deep within the Metropolitan Opera, where a new production of “Adriana” starring Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala opens on New Year’s Eve, the Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili made the three syllables of “restate” a paradox: a gorgeous snarl.

Diving into her chest voice, but not milking it or pushing too hard, her tone stayed round, warm and not all that loud, an iron fist in a cashmere glove. Listening, you felt like Maurizio, pinned to your seat by her sound and authority.”

Throughout the article, Woolfe continues to provide the information necessary to make it comprehensible, defining key terms as they come up. He avoids doing so in a cumbersome, didactic way, instead providing explanations as necessary. For example, in the introduction, Woolfe chooses not to give a direct translation of Rachvelishvili’s line “Restate” (“stay”), instead describing what her character is doing with that command.

When writing in a specialized discipline, especially one that, like opera, already is perceived as unwelcoming to casual participants, it can be hard to find a balance between providing not enough information or too much. Students are sometimes unsure whether to include a dedicated “key words” section at the beginning of a paper, at the risk of overwhelming the reader or causing confusion if some terms don’t reappear until much later in the paper, or to explain each term as it becomes necessary. Woolfe’s article demonstrates an exemplary approach to the issue.

–Rosamond van Wingerden ’20

Source:
Zachary Woolfe: “A Young Singer Takes the Opera World by Storm.” The New York Times. 28 December, 2018.

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Thesis and Structure in Ravel’s Bolero

BY Writing Center

A few days ago, I was having lunch with a friend of mine, an oboist, and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero came up in the conversation.

“How in the world,” she asked, after we had talked about it for a few minutes, “does Ravel build a fifteen minute piece out of so little music at all?”

I had never thought about it before, but once my friend brought it up, we both agreed it was not an easy question to answer. The Bolero has three main motifs — three theses, if you like. First comes the motor rhythm on the snare, which begins in the first bar of the piece and continues virtually unchanged until the end:

The second motif, introduced by the flute, is the primary major melody:

The third and final motif — which my friend and I affectionately called the snake-charmer theme — is introduced by the bassoon and weaves in and out of the major-key passages:

The Bolero is composed entirely of the interplay between these three motifs, varying only the instrumentation. Though, in a written work of comparable length — say, ten pages — three distinct “theses” would almost certainly be excessive, in a piece of music, to have only three motifs carry an entire piece is almost unheard of. Listen to a Beethoven symphony, and you will hear countless themes introduced, and then varied in key and texture until they are almost unrecognizable. Even in a Bach sonata, the epitome of simplicity, the structure is relatively involved, bursting with Escher-like variations that turn one motif into the next without giving you time to notice how the change came about. There is no such variation in the Bolero. And yet somehow, there seems nothing strained or contrived about the piece. With its gradual increase in intensity from the voice of a single snare at pianissimo to a full orchestra at forte, the Bolero holds our attention from the first bar to the last.

By its simple yet flawless execution, the Bolero reminds us that writing of any kind — analytic or creative, literary or musical — need not be complex to be compelling. While there is something to be said for the “broad”, “multi-faceted”, or “comprehensive” thesis, such a thesis is also very easy to mishandle. Too often, we lose control of our argument in the rush to say everything at once. Through the understated structure of the Bolero, we see that it is sometimes better — though certainly, no less difficult — to confine ourselves to the exploration of a single theme. As anyone who has listened all the way to Ravel’s raucous final measures will attest, the simplest construction is often the strongest of all.

–Isabella Khan ’21

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Methodology in Hamilton

BY Writing Center

With the Grammys on Sunday, Hamilton has been on my mind. While Annabel Barry ’19 has previously commented on motive in Hamilton, I’d like to focus this week’s Tortoise Tuesday on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s methodology in telling Alexander Hamilton’s story.

What is most intriguing about Hamilton is of course, its subject: America’s “forgotten” founding father. But a little over 3 years after Hamilton’s release, a Google Trends comparison between Alexander Hamilton and his counterparts shows that he is anything but “forgotten”. Interest clearly spiked in August 2015, as Hamilton made its Broadway debut.

If Lin-Manuel Miranda’s motive in writing Hamilton was to draw attention to Alexander Hamilton’s story, then he has clearly succeeded where others have not. After all, Alexander Hamilton has been the subject of hundreds of thousands of biographies and documentaries. What sets Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work apart is his creative methodology, specifically his use of the musical format.

Starting with a supposedly forgotten subject, as opposed to a more familiar figure, such as George Washington, Miranda had his work cut out for him. The audience enters unassuming, possibly skeptical of a historical musical set in the 1700s (that is, if they haven’t read the glowing reviews yet). However, using a musical — not just any musical but a rap musical — Miranda inserts vibrant elements of artistry, nearly disguising the fact that, at its core, Hamilton is a historical account.

What makes a musical a good methodology? Musicals are similar to television in the sense that you typically don’t expect or wish to gain a history lesson from watching an episode of your favorite drama. However, unlike television, musicals are able to subtly insert otherwise dry historical information in the form of song lyrics. Hamilton capitalizes on this opportunity, leaving the audience with a number of catchy, jazzy, eclectic songs to listen to on repeat, lyrics that easily rival even the “best” of rap, and most importantly, without even realizing it… a newfound interest in and knowledge about Alexander Hamilton.

While not everyone may be able to write and produce a musical to communicate their R3 or senior thesis, I challenge you to think more openly about methodology in your next piece of academic or personal writing. What is the best, most engaging way to communicate your research, your analysis, your argument, your interests? It may just be a musical.

— Ellie Shapiro ’21

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Orienting in Hadestown

BY Writing Center

As an artist and a scholar, I am excited when I see the writing lexicon paralleled in creative works. Recently, I noted the use of orientation techniques in the musical Hadestown, a retelling of the myths of Persephone, Hades, Orpheus, and Eurydice scheduled to hit Broadway this spring. The narrator of Hadestown introduces the audience to the musical’s world just as good writers orient their readers: by providing foundational information and defining key terms.

The narrator, Hermes, orients the audience by providing information necessary to understanding the play. Hermes establishes three essential facts in his first sung lines: 1) the road to hell is a railroad line, 2) times are hard, and 3) the audience is entering “a world of gods and men.” These facts are crucial to understanding everything else from that point on, so it makes sense that this information appears first, before the details of the plot are introduced. Similarly, a writer must establish foundational information regarding the world of the scholarship before introducing the specifics of the paper.

Hermes then introduces the audience to key characters, identifying them and briefly explaining their roles in the story. For example, Hermes introduces himself as “a man with feathers on his feet who would help you to your final destination.” The audience now knows who Hermes is and what purpose he serves. This introduction of characters can be likened to key term definition. A writer must define the important terms used in a paper so their meanings are clear to any reader. Hermes defines himself at the outset in order to establish what “Hermes” means in this play. The audience may have different understandings of the mythological Hermes or have no prior knowledge at all, just as a reader may not be familiar with a key term or understand it in the context of the paper. Defining himself allows Hermes to establish his role in this context clearly.

Hermes’ introduction of important characters is also analogous to the way a writer orients the reader to important scholars who appear in the paper. In the introduction, the writer usually provides a brief explanation of scholars’ arguments or roles in the paper, just as Hermes explains the basics of his role in the show. Whether viewed as an introduction of key terms or relevant scholars, these brief introductions serve the larger purpose of orienting the audience. The opening song in Hadestown thus functions as an introductory paragraph, building a necessary foundation for the rest of the piece.

— Paige Allen ’21

News

Tortoise Tuesday: Motive in Screenwriting

BY Writing Center

This semester I am taking “Introduction to Screenwriting: Adaptation.” It is my first time experimenting with screenwriting, and as a Writing Center Fellow who works closely with Princeton’s lexicon, I have been very struck by how screenwriting, and screenwriting for adaptive works particularly, relies so heavily on the same process of identifying a strong motivating question to frame one’s work. In my first-year writing seminar, I remember constantly being told to look for a puzzle in the primary source: to seek out a point of tension, or contradiction, or even confusion which I could then aim to reconcile or explain through an academic analysis of the text, as informed by what other scholars had to say. This is what is called a motive. At first, I definitely found this notion of finding a motive to be a somewhat difficult concept to grasp.

However, now that I am more comfortable with looking for puzzles while I read and developing motivating questions which arise out of those puzzles, it has been rewarding to see how this same process is used in creative writing. As its title suggests, “Introduction to Screenwriting: Adaptation” introduces students to screenwriting techniques for adaptation as we work to dramatize true stories for the screen. While the stories we are adapting are true, a lot of our class discussions center around how to go about developing our own perspective on those stories through the specific choices we make regarding the translation of stories to the screen.

In tackling our first assignment, we had to write a short screenplay based on an article we had read. Our professor instructed us to look for gaps in the article, moments that puzzled us or confused us or that left us with questions, as she explained that our own unique adaption could arise in how we imaginatively chose to formulate an answer to those puzzling, troubling, or not entirely reconciled moments of the story from the article. Thinking about the process of adaption in this way, as motive, has proven helpful for me. When I read through my article I was looking closely for a moment in which I felt the timeline progress from Point A to Point B at the same time that some sense of tension or confusion remained in terms of the space between those two points. This between space is what I chose to further develop in my own screenplay.

Taking a screenwriting class has really shown me a whole new context in which motive can be at play. Just as I begin writing academic essays by looking for a puzzle from which I can formulate a motivating question, I have found myself going through this same process, almost in a more direct way, when working through my creative writing assignments, which has been really exciting!

— Danielle Hoffman ’20

Conclusion

Balance of Legal and Personal Influences on Constitutional Judgments: Reversals and Redefinition of Precedent

BY Writing Center

In a Tortoiseshell: In her paper, Katja considers the reversal of legal precedent as the result of justices’ personal considerations. She argues that even when Supreme Court justices attempt to separate their judgments from their personal values, personal influence on their decisions is inevitable, for which the reversal of precedent and reconsideration of previous judgments may compensate. The implications of her final product culminate in an exemplary instance of conclusion.

download printable PDF

Excerpt / Katja Stroke-Adolphe

In deciding to reject Adkins, the Court is following what they view to be reasonable. Yet the Court also holds that “[e]ven if the wisdom of the policy be regarded as debatable…still the Legislature is entitled to its judgment,” because the legislative response to a “conviction both as to the presence of the evil and as to the means adapted to check it” cannot be found “arbitrary or capricious.” Hence, that the Legislature might find such a law reasonable, even if the judges did not, is held as evidence for overruling Adkins, following the concept of reasonableness in Holmes’ dissents. Yet this overruling occurs through the union of doctrine and constitutional reasoning. The economic crisis both forced a philosophical rejection of laissez faire and proved the fallacy of Adkins’ and Lochner’s accepting of laissez faire as fact. West Coast Hotel acknowledges the economic crisis as revealing a “compelling consideration”— the impact on the community of the imbalance of power between employer and employee. But the philosophical shift from Adkins, which viewed the minimum wage as an unfair burden on the employer, is evident when the Court states that a minimum wage is justified because “[t]he community is not bound to provide what is in effect a subsidy for unconscionable employers.”

In his dissent, Justice Sutherland’s logic follows Adkins. Furthermore, he contests the reasonableness standard of Holmes and the West Coast Hotel majority, asserting that reasonableness refers only to an individual judge’s mind. Sutherland states: “The check upon the judge is that imposed by his oath of office, by the Constitution, and by his own conscientious and informed convictions.” This conforms to the view of the Supreme Court as representing impersonal supreme law and justice, yet the inclusion of “conscientious and informed convictions” appears contradictory. However, Sutherland rejects the claim that the “only check upon the exercise of the judicial power, when properly invoked, to declare a constitutional right superior to an unconstitutional statute is the judge’s own faculty of self-restraint” as “ill considered,” for he associates self-restraint with “will”, not “judgment”. All the checks upon judges that Sutherland mentions belong to the domain of judgment, thus the convictions he refers to must pertain to a true interpretation of the Constitution, as personal convictions belong to the domain of will. Sutherland’s comment on self-restraint is a criticism of the concept that personal motivations play an inherent role in constitutional decisions. Yet convictions, especially about ambiguous texts, cannot be impersonal. A sign of an exemplary judge may be his capacity to restrain himself from inserting biases and philosophies into judgments, as with Harlan in Plessy.

Sutherland appears to view the majority’s decision as a break with judicial integrity, stating “the meaning of the Constitution does not change with the ebb and flow of economic events.” He implies that the Court’s decision is an “amendment under the guise of interpretation,” remarking that “to miss the difference” between amendment and interpretation is “to miss all that the phrase ‘supreme law of the land’ stands for and to convert what was intended as inescapable and enduring mandates into mere moral reflections.” Moreover, in stating that the three departments of government cannot be agents of each other, he insinuates that the Court, in overruling Adkins, is acting as the agent of the Executive and Congress rather than the Constitution, likely alluding to the growing power of the Executive under Roosevelt. Yet Sutherland’s criticism of the West Coast Hotel majority is parallel to Holmes’ claims in Lochner and Adkins, for both are claiming that the majority was influenced by improper concerns—doctrine, philosophy, or views on what signifies a public good.

The Casey plurality opinion was written by Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, all of whom contributed to the overruling of Booth v. Maryland by Payne v. Tennessee, an overruling influenced by the “victim’s rights” movement, with the only significant change since Booth arguably being the membership of the court. Regardless of whether Payne can be justified by the standards in Casey, the Booth line of cases centers on the ambiguous meaning of “cruel and unusual,” focusing on what is necessary for the death penalty to not be “cruel”. Yet some have argued that the death penalty is inherently “cruel and unusual.” As problematic as are the ambiguities of the Constitution, they are essential. The authors of the Constitution had their own prejudices, and the passages that deal with specifics rather than general principles, such as those dealing with slavery prior to the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, may prove most problematic to constitutional interpretation, by creating an absolute separation between concepts of morality and law. For as dangerous as the intrusion of doctrine into judgment may be, the separation may be just as harmful, and a rigid constitution would likely lead to many reprehensible judgments, for such a constitution could not adapt to the changes since its adoption. The Constitution was conceived by a certain group at a particular moment in time, but because it is interpreted in a continually shifting manner by precedent, and its meaning redefined, the Constitution becomes the product of the minds of all the justices who made judgments upon what is constitutional.

Author Commentary / Katja Stroke-Adolphe

The concept of my paper originated in reading the cases Booth v. Maryland and Payne v. Tennessee for the course “Crime and Punishment,” taught by Professor Brooks. The course focused on the connections between literature and law, and the overruling of Booth in Payne led me to consider to what extent precedent was a concrete and powerful part of law, only broken under extreme circumstances, or, instead, a narrative tool which could be shifted or dismissed based on the personal views of members of the court. This initial question led Professor Brooks to recommend looking at the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which outlines standards for evaluating reversals of precedent. Casey proved the starting point for looking at various reversals of precedent.

Most important in writing this paper was the collection and careful analysis of sources. Not all my analyses ended up in the paper, and the revision process consisted of cutting the paper’s length in half, leaving the most essential points for the paper’s argument. My research eventually focused on two lines of cases: from Lochner v. New York to West Coast Hotel v. Parrish and from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education. Reading these lines of cases led me to analyze the influence of personal elements in major reversals of precedent, and thereby see both the value and the threat that such elements may pose. The basic premise of my paper was that new cases, in their use of precedent, or breaking of precedent, redefine constitutional meanings. By tracing the manner in which constitutional meanings were redefined in major reversals of precedent, I hoped to reveal the dichotomy between constitutional elements as supreme law or judgment, as well as gaps in constitutional clarity which enable the intrusion of human moral principles, prejudices, and biases.

The paragraphs preceding this excerpt begin with my analysis of the Lochner line of cases, with Adkins, which followed the precedent of Lochner, and was overruled in West Coast Hotel. I analyze the ways that the opinions and dissents of those cases dealt with precedent cases, personal motivations, philosophies, reasonableness standards, and concepts of supreme law. I conclude that the presence of personal elements is both inherent and essential to constitutional law jurisprudence, despite how damaging the influence of bias or prejudice has often been. In these cases, the worst decisions were driven by personal motives, biases, or philosophies, but the greatest reversals also were driven by changes in what people believed to be right, or moral, and dissents often had a personal quality, too. There have been justices of the Supreme Court who fought to separate their judgments from personal stances, and that is admirable, and a subject I address in the paper outside of this excerpt. But even with the greatest justices, personal influences are to some extent unavoidable, and this is compensated for by constant reinterpretation.

Editor Commentary / Rosamond van Wingerden

In papers that incorporate many different sources and an extensive cast of characters, summarizing your argument in a concise but comprehensive conclusion can be the hardest part. Nonetheless, that’s what Katja accomplishes in this excerpt. Early on in her paper, Katja introduces her reader to multiple court cases within two legal areas to illustrate the establishment and subsequent reversal of legal precedent as the result of the personal and legal considerations of the justices who supported or dissented from each decision. Throughout the essay, she gives a detailed analysis of each example but always maintains the clarity of her paper by orienting each source and highlighting its relevance to her argument. In her conclusion, Katja skillfully draws together all her evidence to make a broader claim with implications beyond the examples of constitutional judgment she has given.

By avoiding excessive summary in her conclusion and focusing on the more general trend she has identified through her sources, Katja is able to look beyond the two cases of the influence of personal beliefs on the reversal of legal precedent that she has considered. She now presents a broader claim that connects her examples of constitutional judgment both to the framing of the Constitution and to possibilities for its future interpretation, making the overarching argument that “as dangerous as the intrusion of doctrine into judgment may be, the separation may be just as harmful, and a rigid constitution would likely lead to many reprehensible judgments, for such a constitution could not adapt to the changes since its adoption.” Katja’s argument for the benefits of allowing personal morals to intrude on legal judgment may seem counterintuitive, but by preparing her conclusion with ample evidence and expert analysis throughout the paper, she makes a compelling case.