Students Again

Women In Politics

 

Questions

1) How many women are currently serving in United States Congress as of 2008?

 

There are 86 women total in the 110^th Congress, 70 in the House of Representatives and 16 in the Senate.

 

2) Currently, how many woman Governor’s are in the United States?

 

There are 8 woman Governors currently in the United States. The list includes:

AK	Sarah Palin (R)
AZ	Janet Napolitano (D)
CT	M. Jodi Rell (R)
DE	Ruth Ann Minner (D)
HI	Linda Lingle (R)
KS	Kathleen Sebelius (D)
MI	Jennifer Granholm (D)
WA	Christine Gregoire (D)

 

3) How many women are Justices on the United States Supreme Court?

 

There is currently 1 woman Justice (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) on the Supreme Court of the United States. Previously there were 2; however, Sandra Day O’Connor retired on January 31, 2006.

 

Websites Focusing on women in politics:

 

n http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Connected.html (Center For American Women And Politics)

n http://www.pcwppp.org/ (The Pennsylvania Center For Women, Politics, and Public Policy)

n http://www.lwv.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home (League of Women Voters)

n http://www.nwpc.org/ (National Women’s Political Caucus)

n http://www.northnet.org/stlawrenceaauw/pols.htm (Women’s Political History Resources)

Themes from the book If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear

 

1) The Republican Party tends to tell women what they want to hear in an effort to get elected.

2) The Democratic Party does not have enough conviction behind their campaign speeches and ignore some women’s preferences in a snobbish way.

3) Many women are looking for a reason and really want to vote for Democrats. However, many are swayed over to the Republican side over single policy issue concerns.

4) Not every policy issue is weighted equally in importance for many women. For Example, the so-called “security moms” hold security related policy issues as more important than maybe healthcare.

5) Not all women are pro-choice and Democrats need to realize this fact.

6) Republicans are synonymous with strength.

7) A laundry list of other things that the Democratic Party should and should not do to regain the support of women.

8) Neither party really has a deep interest in the everyday lives of ordinary American women.

Women’s Political Interest Groups

 

http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/%7Ecawp/ (Center For American Women and Politics)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.cwfa.org/ (Concerned Women For America)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.eagleforum.org (Eagle Forum)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.frc.org/ (Family Research Council)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.feminist.org/ (Feminist Majority Foundation)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.iwf.org/ (Independent Women's Forum)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.lwv.org/ (League of Women Voters)
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.nfrw.org/ (National Federation of Republican Women)

BLACK, INDIAN, HISPANIC AND ASIAN WOMEN IN ACTION (BIHA)

122 W. Franklin Avenue
Suite 306

Minneapolis, MN 55404
(612) 870-1193

 

AIDS COALITION TO UNLEASH POWER WOMEN'S CAUCUS (ACTUP WC)
135 W. 29th Street 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
(212) 564-2437
FAX (212) 989-1797

INDIAN WOMEN IN PROGRESS (IWP) P.O. Box 805
3404 S. McClintock
Tempe, AZ 85282
(602) 829-7221

LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE OF WOMEN RELIGIOUS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (LCWR)
8808 Cameron Street
Silver Spring, MD 20910
(301) 588-4955
FAX (301) 587-4575

OLDER WOMEN'S LEAGUE (OWL)
666 11th Street, NW
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 783-6686

PAN-PACIFIC AND SOUTHEAST ASIA WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION-- U.S.A. (PPSEAWA--USA)
P.O. Box 1531
Madison Square Station
New York, NY 10159
(212) 228-5307

WIDER OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN (WOW)
815 15th Street, NW
Suite 916
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 638-3143
FAX (202) 638-4885

YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE U.S.A. (YWCA)
726 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
(212) 614-2700
FAX (212) 677-9716

Introduction to American Politics

 

 

Questions: Cohen v. California (1971) 403US15

1. What are the facts of the case?

[16] Appellant Paul Robert Cohen was convicted in the Los Angeles Municipal Court of violating that part of California Penal Code § 415 which prohibits "maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person . . . by . . . offensive conduct . . . ."[note 1] He was given 30 days' imprisonment. The facts upon which his conviction rests are detailed in the opinion of the Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, as follows:

"On April 26, 1968, the defendant was observed in the Los Angeles County Courthouse in the corridor outside of division 20 of the municipal court wearing a jacket bearing the words 'Fuck the Draft' which were plainly visible. There were women and children present in the corridor. The defendant was arrested. The defendant testified that he wore the jacket knowing that the words were on the jacket as a means of informing the public of the depth of his feelings against the Vietnam War and the draft.

"The defendant did not engage in, nor threaten to engage in, nor did anyone as the result of his conduct [17] in fact commit or threaten to commit any act of violence. The defendant did not make any loud or unusual noise, nor was there any evidence that he uttered any sound prior to his arrest." 1 Cal. App. 3d 94, 97-98, 81 Cal. Rptr. 503, 505 (1969).

Statute in full: "Every person who maliciously and willfully disturbs the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person, by loud or unusual noise, or by tumultuous or offensive conduct, or threatening, traducing, quarreling, challenging to fight, or fighting, or who, on the public streets of any unincorporated town, or upon the public highways in such unincorporated town, run any horse race, either for a wager or for amusement, or fire any gun or pistol in such unincorporated town, or use any vulgar, profane, or indecent language within the presence or hearing of women or children, in a loud and boisterous manner, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction by any Court of competent jurisdiction shall be punished by fine not exceeding two hundred dollars, or by imprisonment in the County Jail for not more than ninety days, or by both fine and imprisonment, or either, at the discretion of the Court."

 

1. How was the case ruled? In trial court? In Supreme Court? Why?

This case was originally heard in the Los Angeles Municipal Court under People v. Cohen, 81 Cal. Rptr. 503 in which the defendant was convicted. Then, the case was revisited in the Court of Appeal of California in which the decision of the lower court was affirmed. The lower court decision was made and affirmed by the appellate court on the ground that the statute seeks to preserve an appropriately decorous atmosphere in the courthouse where Cohen was arrested, the States' broader power to prohibit obscene expression, the States are free to ban the simple use, without a demonstration of additional justifying circumstances, of so-called "fighting words," those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction, and Cohen's distasteful mode of expression was thrust upon unwilling or unsuspecting viewers, and that the State might therefore legitimately act as it did in order to protect the sensitive from otherwise unavoidable exposure to appellant's crude form of protest. The Supreme Court ruled for reversal. Mr. Justice Harlan delivered the opinion of the court. The Court, by a vote of 5-4, overturned the appellate court's ruling. In an opinion by Justice John Marshall Harlan,  "Absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions," it said, "the State may not, consistently with the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense." The Court reasoned that the expletive, while provocative, was not directed toward anyone; besides, there was no evidence that people in substantial numbers would be provoked into some kind of physical action by the words on his jacket. Harlan recognized that "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric."

(Section 1 of the amendment declares that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens and citizens of their state of residence; the citizenship of African Americans was thereby established - The section forbids the states to abridge the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizens, to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law (a similar provision restraining the federal government is in the Fifth Amendment), and to deny any person the equal protection of the laws)

 

1. What was the majority opinion of the court (print and read)?

In the first place, Cohen was tried under a statute applicable throughout the entire State. Any attempt to support this conviction on the ground that the statute seeks to preserve an appropriately decorous atmosphere in the courthouse where Cohen was arrested must fail in the absence of any language in the statute that would have put appellant on notice that certain kinds of otherwise permissible speech or conduct would nevertheless, under California law, not be tolerated in certain places. See Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229, 236-237, and n. 11 (1963). Cf. Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39 (1966). No fair reading of the phrase "offensive conduct" can be said sufficiently to inform the ordinary person that distinctions between certain locations are thereby created.[note 3]

In the second place, as it comes to us, this case cannot be said to fall within those relatively few categories of [20] instances where prior decisions have established the power of government to deal more comprehensively with certain forms of individual expression simply upon a showing that such a form was employed. This is not, for example, an obscenity case. Whatever else may be necessary to give rise to the States' broader power to prohibit obscene expression, such expression must be, in some significant way, erotic. Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957). It cannot plausibly be maintained that this vulgar allusion to the Selective Service System would conjure up such psychic stimulation in anyone likely to be confronted with Cohen's crudely defaced jacket.

This Court has also held that the States are free to ban the simple use, without a demonstration of additional justifying circumstances, of so-called "fighting words," those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942). While the four-letter word displayed by Cohen in relation to the draft is not uncommonly employed in a personally provocative fashion, in this instance it was clearly not "directed to the person of the hearer." Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 309 (1940). No individual actually or likely to be present could reasonably have regarded the words on appellant's jacket as a direct personal insult. Nor do we have here an instance of the exercise of the State's police power to prevent a speaker from intentionally provoking a given group to hostile reaction. Cf. Feiner v. New York, 340 U.S. 315 (1951); Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949). There is, as noted above, no showing that anyone who saw Cohen was in fact violently aroused or that appellant intended such a result.

[21] Finally, in arguments before this Court much has been made of the claim that Cohen's distasteful mode of expression was thrust upon unwilling or unsuspecting viewers, and that the State might therefore legitimately act as it did in order to protect the sensitive from otherwise unavoidable exposure to appellant's crude form of protest. Of course, the mere presumed presence of unwitting listeners or viewers does not serve automatically to justify curtailing all speech capable of giving offense. See, e.g., Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U.S. 415 (1971). While this Court has recognized that government may properly act in many situations to prohibit intrusion into the privacy of the home of unwelcome views and ideas which cannot be totally banned from the public dialogue, e.g., Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 (1970), we have at the same time consistently stressed that "we are often 'captives' outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech." Id., at 738. The ability of government, consonant with the Constitution, to shut off discourse solely to protect others from hearing it is, in other words, dependent upon a showing that substantial privacy interests are being invaded in an essentially intolerable manner. Any broader view of this authority would effectively empower a majority to silence dissidents simply as a matter of personal predilections.

1. What legal rights were they asserting?

 

The legal rights they were asserting were the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The First, obviously, dealt with the preservation of the freedom of speech and the Fourteenth dealt with all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens and citizens of their states of residence (Also established African Americans as citizens) which forbids the states to abridge the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizens, to deprive any person of life, liberty, property without the due process of law, and to deny any person equal protection under the law.

 

1. How does the ruling of this case affect us today?

 

In the ruling for reversal by the Supreme Court the Court protected two elements of speech: the emotive (the expression of emotion) and the cognitive (the expression of ideas) which is a freedom we enjoy to this day.