Constitutive rhetoric focuses on the idea that in times of historical crisis, speakers possess the ability to repair the language of the community and reshape the identity of the community. This dissertation relies upon the concept of constitutive rhetoric to examine the Supreme Court’s reapportionment and redistricting decision. By employing constitutive rhetoric, the Supreme Court reacts to the crisis of representation because of malapportionment and redistricting to transform our Constitutional republic to a Constitutional democracy and, further, to debate competing visions of representation and democracy necessary to sustain political life and the democratic experience. Chapter I offers readers a literature review on constitutive rhetoric, a literature review on reapportionment and redistricting, and presents readers with an outline of the dissertation. Chapter II provides a brief history of redistricting in the United States since Colonial times, the development of apportionment and redistricting law at the state court level, and the Supreme Court’s invention of a rhetorical tradition in apportionment and districting law before the Reapportionment Revolution. In the last section of Chapter II, I argue that the Pre-Revolution Supreme Court cases weakened the authority of the rhetorical tradition of judicial deferment. Chapter III examines the Supreme Court’s decision in Baker v. Carr, which reconstitutes the authority of the judiciary in apportionment and redistricting law by redefining the meaning of voting rights and the political questions doctrine, as well as reconceptualizing the law behind voting rights. Further, this chapter outlines the new role of the judiciary in American society and the ethos of judicial restraint that is to guide apportionment and redistricting cases. Chapter IV examines the development of the new rhetorical tradition in apportionment law from the Reapportionment Revolution cases of Gray v. Sanders, Wesberry v. Sander, Reynolds v. Sims, and the rest of the Supreme Court cases form the 1960s. In this new rhetorical tradition, the Supreme Court reconstitutes the American republican to create a legal and moral American democracy, a form of government that rests on the development of the democratic experience and the expansion of the right to vote at the local, state, and federal level. Chapter V examines the Supreme Court cases during the 1970s and the 1980s where, because of their ideological divisions, the Justices offer the American people competing visions of representation and democracy in an attempt to gain interpretive dominance for their visions. Finally, Chapter VI examines the Supreme Court’s decisions from the 1990s and 2000s. In these decisions, the Justices debate the best means to achieve racial reconciliation through apportionment and redistricting law and the best formation of democracy to secure that reconciliation.

Rhetoric and Rupture: A Theory of the Event This thesis engages the problematic of agency and interiority in rhetorical studies by proposing a theory of evental rhetoric. The event is a rupture in the continuities of the symbolic, revealing the distance between the forces of symbolization and their phantasmagorical effects. This theory is built upon the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques Lacan, engaging questions of truth, being, and the relationship of the subject to herself and the world. The rhetorics of legal practice, particularly the per curiam opinions of the United States Supreme Court, I argue, provide the institutional and epistemological formations necessary to transcend the bonds of situated rhetoric and become truly evental. I turn to the Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. United States as an example of such an evental rhetoric. These rhetorics clear the way for the introduction of the new, and found a conversation in which democracy can begin.

Many Supreme Court followers contended that Judge John Roberts entered his Supreme Court confirmation hearings as a "stealth candidate" who lacked a paper trail the Judiciary Committee could vet to discern the interpretive approach, or judicial philosophy, to which Judge Roberts' subscribed. This dissertation used rhetorical criticism as a methodological approach for examining this claim. A close-reading of Roberts' law journal articles, his writings from his service during the Reagan and Bush (41) administrations, the text of his appellate court confirmation testimony and published opinions, and the text of his Supreme Court confirmation testimony and published opinions reveals that Roberts was not a "stealth candidate" but instead a jurist who resolved constitutional, judicial, political, and statutory issues by incorporating components of originalism and positivism into his prudentialist judicial philosophy. The first two chapters of the dissertation provide the requisite background for the study. Chapter I discusses the challenges of the nomination and confirmation processes for Supreme Court Justices, and the chapter discusses the crucial powers that the Chief Justice possesses. Chapter II introduces readers to legal arguments, argument modalities, and judicial philosophies, and the chapter offers a new definition for the terms "legal rhetoric" and provides a new methodology for studying judicial discourse. The subsequent chapters comprise the core of the study. Chapter III examines Roberts' law review articles and the letters, memoranda, and position papers he wrote while working for the Reagan and Bush administrations, Chapter IV investigates Roberts' appellate court confirmation testimony and his published opinions, and Chapter V investigates Roberts' Supreme Court confirmation testimony and his published opinions. Following a chronological approach reveals that Roberts consistently used certain argument types within corresponding argument modalities to formulate his argumentative strategies, and each chapter demonstrates that Roberts' adhered to a prudentialist interpretive approach to resolve constitutional and statutory questions. Finally, Chapter VI argues that scholars should examine judicial discourse from an interdisciplinary perspective and reevaluate their conceptions about legal rhetoric and rhetorical criticism.

abstract: Rather than being the lawless barbarian society that history and popular culture have painted it, medieval Scandinavian culture was more complex and nuanced. This dissertation interrogates the use of a rhetoric of reasonableness (hóf) in the medieval Nordic society to give voice to this silenced tradition. Specifically, this research focuses on the use of rhetoric in civic and legal settings to show that medieval Scandinavians were more interested in reasonable solutions than unreasonable ones. Civic rhetoric among the medieval Nordic people relied heavily on hóf to keep civic practice manageable. Working in small towns and villages without central bureaucracies, reasonableness became important to the functioning of the village. Large scale disruptions could mean the death of all inhabitants in the area due to social disruption if violence occurred, so finding reasonable means of dealing with social problems was of paramount importance to the Norse. Using readings and analysis from the Icelandic sagas, I show the mechanisms of their rhetoric were used to manage civic life. Legal rhetoric was also based on reasonableness. If civic actions became violent or potentially violent, then the courts needed a way to redress and maintain the peace in the area. The practice of law was heavily influenced by the rhetorical stance of hóf. The Scandinavian tradition of court cases appears in their early laws and in several sagas which allows a picture to be created of their rhetorical stance of reasonableness in the law cases. Analysis of historical data and saga manuscripts give evidence of a rhetorical tradition of reasonable redress in the legal system. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2020

This dissertation provides a theoretically grounded framework for investigating "legal rhetoric." By making a distinction between the discursive elements of a Legal system and the broader rhetorical notion of Law, rhetorical critics can better understand the interdependent relationship between citizens, their legal structures, and their cultures. The Legal system represents the forum in which legal disputes are addressed. In contrast, the Law signifies the principles of justice and fairness that give rise to legal disputes addressed by the Legal system. This dissertation emphasizes the important role that media play in disseminating information about specific legal disputes and providing citizens an opportunity to reflect on which principles of justice and fairness are to be valued. This study specifically examines the text, reasoning, and media coverage of Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, two U.S. Supreme Court cases related to the University of Michigan's use of racial classifications in its admissions process. By comparing which arguments and rhetorical elements from the Supreme Court's 2003 decisions were reported in the press, this dissertation both demonstrates the rhetorical concepts of the "Law" and the "Legal System" and suggests how citizens and rhetorical scholars can more fully critique legal texts. / text

The state often enacts violence against marginalized groups by rendering them monstrous. The early eighteenth century saw early and stellar instances of this phenomenon in the way the British Empire pursued and executed pirates. These "golden age" pirates represented an extraordinary cross-section of marginalization politically, economically, socially, and otherwise, all of which threatened the political and social mores of Imperial Britain. In order to implement a policy and practice of pirate annihilation, British authorities constructed pirates as monstrous by racializing, dehumanizing, and emphasizing the supernatural quality of pirates. This study analyzes three eighteenth-century piracy trial transcripts--those of William Kidd, Stede Bonnet, and William Fly--in order to assess how lawyers and judges constructed pirates as monstrous so as to justify the massive and total violence inflicted on them as a class resulting in their complete destruction. In so doing, this study tracks rhetorical tactics and strategies still used by empires and the state today against marginalized peoples to an original historical source.

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