The realism debate and the politics of modern art in early postwar Japan

This article examines the realism debate (riarizumu ronsō) that took place between 1946 and 1950 as a forum in which ideas on artistic form, the role of the artist in society, and the social relevance of art come into focus in a way that allows us to see how questions such as Japan's modernity, the recent experience of fascism, and the challenges of rebuilding culture during the early cold war were taken up by leading cultural figures in the field of the visual arts. Occurring alongside discussions of how the art world could be reformed to avoid the failures of fascism, the debate served as an occasion to re-examine the history of modern art in Europe and Japan and to consider the question of artistic representation in a way that opened the most fundamental question of art's relationship to the world and promised to begin the process of envisioning it anew. The debate involved three camps which I label social realism (represented by Hayashi Fumio and Nagai Kiyoshi), modernist realism (Hijikata Tei’ichi), and avant-garde realism (Uemura Takachiyo, Okamoto Tarō, and Hanada Kiyoteru). While assessing their points of agreement and disagreement, I argue that the debate set the stage for debates in the 1950s and beyond.     

The (Dis)Advantage of Certainty: The Importance of Certainty in Language

How can legal decision makers increase the likelihood of a favorable response from other legal and social actors? To answer this, we propose a novel theory based on the certainty expressed in language that is applicable to many different legal contexts. The theory is grounded in psychology and legal advocacy and suggests that expressing certainty enhances the persuasiveness of a message. We apply this theory to the principal–agent framework to examine the treatment of Supreme Court precedent by the Federal Courts of Appeal. We find that as the level of certainty in the Supreme Court's opinion increases, the lower courts are more likely to positively treat the Court's decision. We then discuss the implications of our findings for using certainty in a broader context.     

Justices and Legal Clarity: Analyzing the Complexity of U.S. Supreme Court Opinions

Legal clarity is important to understand and measure because of its connection to the rule of law. We provide the first systematic examination of the clarity of Supreme Court opinions and discover five important results. First, certain justices systematically craft clearer opinions than others. Justices Scalia and Breyer write the clearest opinions, while Justice Ginsburg consistently writes the most complex opinions. Second, ideology does not predict clarity in majority or concurring opinions. Third, all justices write clearer dissents than majority opinions, while minimum winning coalitions produce the clearest majority opinions. Fourth, justices across the board write clearer opinions in criminal procedure cases than in any other issue area. Finally, opinions that formally alter Court precedent render less clear law, potentially leading to a cycle of legal ambiguity.     

The proximity paradox: the legislative agenda and?the?electoral success of ideological extremists

This paper presents a new approach to spatial models of legislative elections in which voters have preferences over the bundles of roll call votes implied by candidate locations rather than over the locations themselves. With such preferences, voters with single-peaked, symmetric preferences and perfect information can sincerely prefer a distant candidate to a more proximate candidate. Moreover, negative agenda control in Congress makes such preference orderings inevitable, so party agenda control can allow majority party extremists to defeat more centrist minority party candidates. The model has implications for theories of parties in Congress, and spatial modeling more broadly.