Republicans['] Ain Constitutional Discourse

Julian Nyarko, Eric Talley, together with I bring exactly posted a new paper that uses computational methods to investigate the ideological together with partisan construction of constitutional discourse on the flooring of Congress (and secondarily inward paper editorials). The headline finding is that constitutional discourse has grown much to a greater extent than polarized over the yesteryear 4 decades. In fact, it has polarized at to the lowest degree equally quickly equally nonconstitutional discourse. How tin computational methods exhibit this? Relative to the early on together with mid-twentieth century, it has croak substantially easier for an algorithmic classifier to predict, based solely on the semantic content of a constitutional utterance, whether a Republican/conservative or a Democrat/liberal is speaking.

There are a reveal of other intriguing findings inward the paper, which nosotros promise volition opened upwardly up a novel ready of inquiry agendas for constitutional scholarship. Here, I volition advert exactly one.

Although the paper focuses on aggregate trends inward “constitutional polarization,” nosotros visit inward Part V whether roughly peculiarly salient price may last doing outsized travel inward differentiating the parties’ contemporary constitutional rhetorics. The figures below display discussion clouds associated amongst the utilization of price inward the broadest constitutional lexicon that nosotros created (containing price from the text of the Constitution likewise equally of import constitutional concepts that are at to the lowest degree several decades old) for ii eras: 1959 to 1976 together with 1999 to 2016. The before era predates the recent surge inward polarization of constitutional discourse; the afterwards era captures the surge at its apex.

Figure Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 shows the fifty close distinctive price regardless of party inward congressional flooring remarks from each era, amongst size scaled to its distinctiveness. “Distinctiveness” refers to the departure inward the relative frequency amongst which a term is used across the ii major parties. For instance, if Republicans purpose a term 10 times for every 10,000 words they speak, whereas Democrats purpose it 8 times, together with thus the distinctiveness is (10/10,000) – (8/10,000) = 0.0002. In other words, these are the 50 constitutionally freighted price that are close strongly “owned” yesteryear ane item political party during the years inward question.

Figure B replicates the analysis for the Obama presidency specifically, the final amount presidency for which nosotros bring data. All price inward all discussion clouds are color-coded based on which political party uses the term close frequently.

These results, I submit, are stunning. In the 1959–1976 period, Figure Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 shows, congressional Democrats had a far more distinctive together with robust constitutional vocabulary than Republicans did. In the 1999–2016 period, the contrary was true—with the of import exceptions that the price “civil rights” together with “voting rights” remained squarely inward the Democratic fold.

Put (overly) simply, Democrats used to dominate constitutional discourse. Now Republicans do.