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In what ways can brands symbolize America's defining values, and for whom do these values resonate? Drawing from research on values (Schwartz 1994), the symbolic power of brands (Holt 2004, 2006; McCracken 1986), and system justification theory (Jost and Banaji 1994), the current research explores (1) what values define America's dominant ideology, (2) which consumers subscribe to these values, and (3) implications for brands that reflect versus do not reflect the dominant ideology. It is proposed that consumers vary in their satisfaction with American society and their endorsement of America's defining values, and thus differ in the values they endorse versus reject in brands. Five experiments manipulate whether or not the values signaled by a brand are in alignment with the dominant ideology. Consumers more versus less satisfied with American society respond differently to the values a brand signals, affecting brand attitudes, perceptions of a brand's status as a cultural icon, and purchase intentions. In a sixth experiment, those more versus less satisfied with American society respond differently to consumerrelated policy (i.e., a ban on trans fat), depending on the values that the policy is framed as reflecting. Implications for branding and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Note explores the persistent differences in status among federal district judges in U.S. territories. Beginning with Congress's decision to extend life tenure to federal judges in Puerto Rico in 1966, the Note traces the evolution of local and federal courts in U.S. territories over the past half century. Although universally counted within the ninety-four districts of the Article III system, the federal district courts in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not staffed by Article III judges. In some cases, these federal district judges can be replaced at any moment. This regime, once defended on account of the distinguishing jurisdictional features of federal courts overseas, has outgrown its prevailing justifications. Divorced from its once-plausible logic of necessity and institutional development, the present status of federal district judges in the territories is an emerging problem in federal judicial independence that exposes the federal courts to charges of exceptionalism and political interference. Focusing on judicial administration, this Note challenges the notion that all federal district judges are created equal, highlighting an underinterrogated space in the discourse on U.S. empire: the Judicial Conference of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of sound-bite news is one of the most widely bemoaned findings in political communication research. Yet, the detrimental effects of this trend have been more assumed than demonstrated. This study examines one consequence of sound-bite journalism: the creation of incomplete argument, in which speakers presenting their political position in the news do not also justify it. Drawing on data about television news in Germany, Russia, and the United States, it shows that shrinking sound bites consistently reduce the probability of opinion justification across widely differing national contexts. Sound-bite journalism emerges as harmful to television news' ability to produce public justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I use Boltanski and Thévenot's (2006) work on "logics of justifi cation" to make the case that diversity, defi ned broadly as engagement with otherness, has limited worth as a "civic argument" in the United States. I argue that "diversity talk" has not been effective in civic spheres because it does not challenge the underlying pluralist architecture of the US political system. Instead, diversity in the civic sphere is regarded as producing confl ict or an apolitical "improvement in manners" (Rorty 1999) rather than as a mechanism for citizenship development. This diminishes the ability for diversity to enhance democratic citizenship by fostering the development of a type of civic wisdom necessary for effective decision making in a democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the proposed replacement of a law and economics justification for intellectual property rights (IPR) with a well-being approach in the U.S. and the European Union. According to the article, the dominant justification for IPR in many Western nations and international treaties is utilitarian and based on the Chicago School of Law and Economics. Policy-making is addressed in relation to economic growth, wealth distribution, and gross domestic product.

Abstract: In the original US valuation study of EQ-5D states, all worse-than-dead time trade-off responses (26% of the sample) were divided by 39 to increase the QALY estimates. This transformation has no theoretical justification and motivates this re-examination. Using the publically available dataset, we compared three alternative random utility models: instant (IRUM), angular (ARUM), and episodic (ERUM) models. Each leads to a distinct econometric estimator: mean ratio, ratio of means, and coefficient, respectively. IRUM suggests that 203 of the 243 EQ-5D states are worse-than-dead, which has little face validity compared to ARUM and ERUM (42 and 3 WTD states). ARUM and ERUM estimates are proportionally related such that losses in QALYs are approximately 37% larger under ARUM than ERUM. Compared to ERUM, economic evaluations using ARUM estimates emphasize quality of life, and this difference may influence policy decisions. Either ERUM or ARUM values sets are recommended over the original, transformed set. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the vocabularies that arose from justifying the American Revolution which started in 1775 in the U.S. It discusses the concept "vocabulary of motives" which was first used in social science by the young C. Wright Mills and suggested two different kinds of vocabularies of motives which are "vocabularies of justification" and "compelling vocabularies." It defines "revolution" as a full and rapid change of political, economic and other realms within a society which requires extraordinary justifications. It also outlines the 27 arguments of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 by then President Thomas Jefferson which was declared as the most famous vocabulary of justification of revolution.

One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of “challenge interviews” on a sample of voters who reported believing in a link between Saddam and 9/11, we propose instead a social psychological explanation for the belief in this link. We identify a number of social psychological mechanisms voters use to maintain false beliefs in the face of disconfirming information, and we show that for a subset of voters the main reason to believe in the link was that it made sense of the administration's decision to go to war against Iraq. We call this inferred justification: for these voters, the fact of the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and 9/11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideal of a free press informs theoretical and pragmatic constructions of media, civil society, and the public sphere in U.S. development efforts. The role of the free press in fostering civil society is held as an ideal for judging the rest of the world and for the justification of U.S. interventions elsewhere in the world sponsored by organizations such as United States Agency for International Development. Using a grounded theory analysis of the coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom, this article demonstrates the frames that were presented in U.S. war coverage as justifications of the war. The grounded theory analysis is followed up by a content analysis to document the frequencies of occurrence of the frames. The frames suggest that media organizations worked more as the public relations agents of the U.S. government and actively engaged in demonization of the enemy to justify U.S. foreign policy during the early days of the war. Drawing on a postcolonial perspective, this article argues that the lapses in rationality reflected in the frames of war coverage pose critical questions for further interrogation about the nature of the media in Western civil societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the author's view on valuing the non-instrumental things to the non-human natural world in the U.S. The two general approaches to defend the claim that ought to be valued includes theoretical and pragmatic forms of justification to the value of non-instrumentally things. Meanwhuile, anthropocentric type of valuing is presented, which argues that wide range of natural things have non-instrumental value as constituent objects of experiences and relationships.

The article presents views by the author on issues concerning the role of accurate history of science in science education in the U.S. The author agrees on the opinion by a critic that they can give a rational justification for most of the paradigms they accept in physical science. The author points out that the point of dispute is whether the scientific community waited for such justification before adopting a proposed new paradigm. In support to this claim, the author cites several examples that could magnify the need for first-hand justification.