Makíng the case ís what arguers do. And they often do ít ín public. The most common understanding ofcaseís that ít ís a set of reasons and supportíng evídence used by an advocate to support or to oppose a claím. A definítíon símílar to thís can be found in most textbooks on argumentatíon and debate. One thínks, for example, of a prosecutor’s case ín a crímínal proceeding or of the bríefs by opposíng lawyers outlíníng theír respectíve cases ín a cívíl suít. Wíthín the realm of scíence, one can ímagíne a case beíng made for or agaínst a...

TheIliadand theOdysseyare celebrated as generative works in the development of Western culture.¹ The epics are the end-product of a performative oral tradition transforming itself into discourse, the medium of written form; as a result, each exhibits the beginnings of a time where the practices of communication are no longer taken for granted and are changing.² A return to the beginnings of this cultural moment invites the study of oratorical consciousness, the reflexive quality of mind that shapes human agency within the social contingencies of an emergent rhetorical culture.³ Thus, Quintilian identifies the distinction of Homer as...

Lysander Spooner’s 1845 treatiseThe Unconstitutionality of Slaverypresents rhetorical scholars interested in constitutional argument with an interesting evaluative problem.¹ Rhetoricians have long struggled with the problem of critical evaluation. Almost fifty years ago Edwin Black argued that the then-dominant disciplinary paradigm “limits [rhetorical] criticism to the evaluation of immediate effects.” As numerous scholars acknowledge, Spooner and his fellow “radical constitutionalists” failed any instrumental test.² Black recognized that rhetoricians in the mid-twentieth century ventured alternative modes of evaluation, but he argued that even when they sought to elude instrumentalism’s gravitational pull via an assessment of rhetorical “quality,” their efforts to...

Writing to his friend Joshua Speed in March 1842, Lincoln implored both Speed and his wife to read his “Temperance speech . . . as an act of charity to me; for I can not learn that any body else has read it, or is likely to.”¹ The sincerity of Lincoln’s plea is hardly certain—we are, after all, dealing with the man who said that the world would little note nor long remember what he said at Gettysburg. But whether genuine or feigned, Lincoln’s anxiety about finding readers proved to be unfounded. Herndon, in his biography, reported that the...

The extension of civil rights to minorities and women has always been closely linked to differing interpretations of the Constitution by the public, state governments, members of Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court. That interpretive relationship is central to understanding the role that Andrew Johnson played, first in the Senate and then as president, and to differentiating his views from those of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Southern Democrat who adhered strongly to a states’ rights understanding of the Constitution and who based his opposition to all measures to ensure the equal treatment of former slaves on his understanding of...

Franklin D. Roosevelt loved stamps. He began collecting them as a boy and the hobby never left him. When he became president of the United States, he asked the State Department what they did with the foreign envelopes sent to them. He learned they threw most away. Shortly thereafter, a Saturday courier began delivering a packet to the White House. FDR spent that day and sometimes Sunday as well, organizing, researching, and cataloging his new acquisitions. Of course, he also purchased stamps, and once foreign dignitaries discovered his interest they often made gifts of stamps. Admiral Ross McIntire, FDR’s physician,...

From the moment that Barack Obama announced he was running for president, his experience—or, rather, lack thereof—was an issue. Obama had worked as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, served seven years in the Illinois State Senate, risen to national prominence with his 2004 address to the Democratic National Convention, and then been elected to the U.S. Senate, where he had served only two years by the time he became a presidential candidate. In short, Obama had limited experience with national politics and issues.¹

The question of Obama’s experience was even more salient when it came to...

Long after the words of Barack Obama’s inaugural address have passed into memory—a word here, a phrase there, a theme recalled—those who witnessed the ceremony of January 20, 2009, whether in person, on television, or over the Internet, will never forget the sea of humanity that surrounded the platform and carried west almost as far as the eye could see.¹ Whether people were watching on the Jumbotron

at the National Mall or in the comfort of their own living rooms, the pictures said it all—or so it seemed to the expert observers, many of whom could not...

Ideology operates best when it operates invisibly. Often obscuring the role of values and interests in society, ideologies render the particular as universal, decisions as givens, and constructs as natural. The circulation and comparative strength of competing ideologies shape deliberation and decision making in democratic polities, effectively constituting a “zone of reasonableness” that delineates public agendas, frames public debates, establishes presumption and burdens of proof, and secures first premises and normative frameworks. Even as ideologies may construct boundaries of public debate, they do not produce unthinking subjects who simply accept the precepts of a particular ideology wholly and without question....