Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1961. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-75).

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Thesis advisor: Stephen J. Pfohl / Existing studies of governmental responses to human rights allegations emphasize the rhetorical forms that official claims take at the expense of demonstrating how contextual factors influence discourse. Analytically, this dissertation accounts for these factors by theorizing and analyzing how knowledge and culture operate in American political discourse of torture. Drawing on a qualitative content and discourse analysis of 40 congressional hearings, held between 2003 and 2008, this dissertation documents a transition in American politics from a discourse of denial, which downplayed allegations of abuse and torture, to a discourse of acknowledgment, which criticized the Bush administration's interrogation policies on the grounds that the policies permitted torture and undermined U.S. interests. By situating this transition within its institutional and political context, this study examines the influence of documentary evidence of torture, interpretive frames in which American officials situated that evidence, and political power as expressed in control over congressional committees on political discourse. Between 2003 and 2008, a significant volume of documentary evidence of violence against detainees in U.S. custody entered public discourse. Typically, shifts in congressional discourse followed the release of official, documentary evidence produced by government sources, such as military police or FBI agents, that provided first-hand or localized portrayals of abuse and torture at U.S. detention facilities. Such documents, including the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison and FBI emails documenting torture at Guantánamo, secured a "reality" of violence that members of Congress found difficult to rationalize as legitimate state violence. This difficulty stems, in part, from the fact that localized portrayals of interpersonal violence frequently capture the excesses of that violence--the irrationality, sadism, and innovations in cruelty of torturers and the vulnerabilities of sufferers of torture. Significantly, though, the political meaning of documentary evidence derives from the interpretive frames in which it is situated. Between 2003 and 2008, "human rights" and the "rule of law" became increasingly available as interpretive frames for the political debate over detention and interrogation. This development resulted from several changes in the political environment, including the Bush administration's mobilization of human rights to legitimize the Iraq war and the Supreme Court's rulings on cases involving detainees. The Democrat's mid-term victory in 2006, which won Democrats control over both the House of Representatives and Senate, also profoundly influenced political discourse. Democrats used congressional committees to pursue broad, reflective hearings on the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. By inviting legal scholars and representatives of human rights organizations to speak about the policies, the Committees further elevated human rights and the rule of law in the debate about torture. Given these developments, a critical discourse of torture gradually emerged and solidified. This discourse labeled American interrogation practices--known to their supporters as "enhanced interrogation"--as torture and linked their use to significant and negative global consequences for the U.S. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Thesis advisor: R. Shep Melnick / This paper analyzes Pope Francis’s view of politics, particularly politics in the United States. Beginning with his speech before a special joint session of Congress on September 24, 2015, this paper explores many of the themes the Pope introduces in this speech, and compares those themes to those in other works he has published since being elected Pontiff in 2013. Then, this paper applies what he has said about contemporary American politics with the analysis of other scholars of American politics. Ultimately, I find that the Pope is very aware of problems in the United States, but hopes to present a positive alternative to address what he identifies as the contemporary world’s ills. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

To investigate how federal discourse constructs adolescence, the author analyzed discussions of abstinence-only sexuality education from the U.S. Congressional Record from 2001 to 2007. He used grounded theory methodology to identify theoretical codes and construct a model from the data. The grounded theory developed focused on Congress’s maintenance of its role in mediating concern over the sexual behavior of adolescents as opposed to finding a solution to the problem it had identified. The author relates this theory to Foucault’s (1974/1991) concept of governmentality. He discusses Congress’s discourse about adolescence using Lesko’s (2001) confident characteristics of adolescence as a framework.

Many people assume that when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidates a federal statute as unconstitutional, the Court's decision establishes binding precedent that narrows the U.S. Congress's available options. This thesis examines whether Congress has in practice been able to effectively circumvent Supreme Court precedents while still acting consistently with such precedents in a narrow sense by not repassing an identical statute. More specifically, this work explores whether the U.S. Congress was able to repass new statutes similar to those previously invalidated by the Rehnquist Court (1986-2005). To more fully probe this issue, this study examines how often Congress has responded in such a manner, how successful Congress was in replicating the initial invalidated statute's breadth and potency, the success of the amended statute's subsequent implementation or whether the new statutes survived judicial scrutiny, and lastly, whether legislative policy goals or Court precedents prevailed. The research focused on the Rehnquist Court because it invalidated an unprecedented 34 federal statutes. This analysis found that Congress offered 11 proposals, but only repassed four statutes attempting to replicate the initial invalidated statutes. Nevertheless, in the four instances of successful reenactment, Congress was able to achieve, in practice, indistinguishable potency and breadth in two statutes and identical potency with significantly narrower breadth in one statute. This work is significant because it demonstrates that occasionally Congress has utilized available tools—in this case repassing analogous statutes—to effectively counter Supreme Court precedents. The Supreme Court is not always the exclusive or irrevocable arbitrator of constitutional controversies. / Master of Arts

Abstract This thesis focuses on the oversight mechanism used by congress to supervise the intelligence department, mainly through examining the historical development of the oversight mechanism that the U.S. Congress uses over the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, as well as evaluating the mechanism¡¦s successes and failures, in order to find a suitable direction for establishing an oversight mechanism for our country¡¦s Legislative Yuan over the National Security Agency, NSA. First of all, the inceptive backgrounds and historical developments of the CIA and the NSA are introduced. After establishing an understanding of the special backgrounds and developments of the two agencies, the writer, using the Institutional Process Theory, analyzes and discusses how the U.S. Congress¡¦ oversight mechanism over the CIA has progressed, thereby determining the key to the successes and failures of the U.S. Congress¡¦ intelligence oversight mechanism. Having analyzed the intelligence oversight mechanism of the U.S. Congress, the writer brings up suggestions as to how our country¡¦s Legislative Yuan can develop an oversight mechanism over the NSA in the future. Lastly, from these discussions, the writer addresses the contributions, propositions, and limitations of this research and hopes that these research and discussions can assist the Legislative Yuan in institutionalizing a comprehensive intelligence oversight mechanism over the NSA.

Book Summary: Offering a unique resource for students, scholars, and citizens, this work fully explains all of the 21 enumerated powers of the U.S. Congress, from the "power of the purse" to the power to declare war. • Presents comprehensive coverage of all congressional powers through authoritative essays by recognized experts • Enables readers to connect the long-ago goals and perspectives of the Founding Fathers to current issues and controversies • Facilitates a fully contextualized understanding of the legislative power of Congress―and the extent and limitations of leverage that it can wield on domestic and foreign policy • Provides an accessible gateway to further, more detailed research of each of the individual congressional powers • Includes appendices containing the full texts of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union and the Constitution of the United States

This thesis aims to contribute to the current academic debate on contemporary polarization in the U.S. Congress. The paper provides a brief overview of the relevenat existing literature and schools of thought on the issue. As part of the thought direction which steers away from definining roots and causes of polarization among the general public but rather sees them as issues of the political elite, this thesis highlights the need to focus on individual Congressional Member Organizations (CMOs) in the House of Representatives and their connection to polarization. By applying an existing dataset accepted among political science scholars as the key tool for measuring polarization, the thesis seeks to affirm the presumed ideological differences among the individual CMOs (or caucuses). The main part of this thesis which adds value to further discussion is the case study of all roll call votes of the 114th House of Representatives examining voting cohesion of the studied caucuses. The aim of this study is to show to what extent the CMOs are in fact consistent voting blocs and how influential they can potentially be within the political elites in the House of Representatives and to what level they may be contributing to the contemporary polarization.